Man, those are some mad ducking skills (p)Resident Shrub utilizes. Probably learned it avoiding responsibility (AWOL from National Guard, criminal convictions for drunk driving, running the most corrupt presidency EVER, lying through his teeth, personally profiting from his illegal war, etc). Should serve him well when he's indicted. The pissed off shoe-thrower is called Muntazer al-Zaidi (post on him).

(Reuters) - The Iraqi journalist who threw his shoes at U.S. President George W. Bush in a supreme insult has suddenly become the talk of Iraq.

The little known Shi'ite reporter said to have harbored anger against Bush for the thousands of Iraqis who died after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, had previously made headlines only once, when he was briefly kidnapped by unknown gunmen in 2007.

TV reporter Muntazer al-Zaidi remained in detention on Monday, accused by the Iraqi government of a "barbaric act."

His employer, independent al-Baghdadiya television, demanded his release and demonstrators rallied for him in Sadr City in Baghdad, the southern Shi'ite stronghold of Basra and the holy city of Najaf, where some threw shoes at a U.S. convoy.

"Thanks be to God, Muntazer's act fills Iraqi hearts with pride," his brother, Udai al-Zaidi, told Reuters Television, demanding that the Iraqi government free him.

"I'm sure many Iraqis want to do what Muntazer did. Muntazer used to say all the orphans whose father were killed are because of Bush."

Zaidi shouted "this is a goodbye kiss from the Iraqi people, dog," at Bush in a news conference the U.S. president held with Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki during an unannounced farewell visit to Baghdad on Sunday.

The journalist then flung one shoe at Bush, forcing him to duck, followed by another, which sailed over Bush's head and slammed into the wall behind him. Throwing shoes at someone is the worst possible insult in the Arab world.

Zaidi was dragged struggling and screaming from the room by security guards and could be heard shouting outside while the news conference continued after momentary mayhem.

'BARBARIC'

The Iraqi government said Zaidi had carried out "a barbaric and ignominious act" that did not correspond to the role of the media.

"He tried to attack the visiting president," the media center of the council of ministers said in a statement.

"At the same time that we condemn this ignominious act, we call on the television channel of this reporter to deliver a public apology for this act which sullies the reputation of all Iraqi journalists and the whole media."

Al-Baghdadiya television demanded Zaidi's immediate release, "in accordance with the democratic era and the freedom of expression that Iraqis were promised by U.S. authorities."

It said that any harsh measures taken against the reporter would be reminders of the "dictatorial era" that Washington said its forces invaded Iraq to end.

Zaidi, now in his late 20s, spent more than two days blindfolded, barely eating and drinking, after armed men forced him into a car as he walked to work in November 2007.

He said at the time that the kidnappers had beaten him until he lost consciousness, and used his necktie to blindfold him and bound his hands with his shoelaces.

He never learned the identity of the kidnappers, who questioned him about his work but did not demand a ransom.

Colleagues of Zaidi say he resented President Bush, blaming him for the bloodshed that ravaged Iraq after the invasion. It did not appear that he had lost any close family members during the sectarian killings and insurgency, which in recent months have finally begun to wane.

A small number of supporters of anti-American Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr called for his release in Basra, the southern city that controls Iraq's oil exports.

Larger groups of Sadrists also protested in Baghdad's Sadr City and in the Shi'ite holy city of Najaf. In Najaf, witnesses said demonstrators threw shoes at a passing American convoy.

Wealthy racist homophobe William F. Buckley finally dropped dead today at 82 from emphysema.

While some are singing about his "intellectual fervor and gentlemanly demeanor", I'm not. So he was smart and had good manners, so what? The man was a FIRST CLASS ASSHOLE, good riddance, one less rich republican scumbag on the planet is a good thing.

Hopefully he suffered huge as his lungs were eaten away from a lifetime of bad habits: "I stayed off the cigarettes but went to the idiocy of cigars inhaled, and suffer now from emphysema."

Here's a very small sample of the hateful filth which spewed from his rethuglian mouth:

I'd rather entrust the government of the United States to the first 400 people listed in the Boston telephone directory than to the faculty of Harvard University.

Scientists are people who build the Brooklyn Bridge and then buy it.

"...[G]ay marriage, gay marriage, gay marriage—I wish more gays would move to Canada. Just kidding."—National Review, July 28, 2003

"Resentment is firm against homosexual advances toward children, but the question is not explored whether that crime—which was then, continues to be, and will be in the future, a sin—has increased in proportion to the toleration of the practice at an adult level."—National Review, May, 6 2002

"When it was black men persecuting white or black men—in the Congo, for instance—he was strangely silent on the issue of human rights. The human rights of Chinese, or of Caucasians living behind the Iron Curtain never appeared to move him."—On Martin Luther King, Jr., 1979

"Now listen, you queer. Stop calling me a crypto Nazi, or I'll sock you in your goddamn face and you'll stay plastered."—To Gore Vidal, 1968

"[The civil rights movement] called for nothing less, when analyzed, than the evanescence of color. Since no such thing could be brought about, can be brought about, there is a sense of disappointment among those civil rights workers who somehow permitted themselves to believe that the passage of a few bits and pieces of legislation would transform the life of the American Negro..."—National Review, July 19, 1966

"New York should undertake to quarantine all addicts, even as smallpox carriers would be quarantined during a plague."—The Unmaking of the Mayor, 1965

"The Beatles are not merely awful.... They are so unbelievably horrible, so appallingly unmusical, so dogmatically insensitive to the magic of the art, that they qualify as crowned heads of antimusic."—September 8, 1964

"But whatever the exact net result in the restricted field of school desegregation, what a price we are paying for Brown! It would be ridiculous to hold the Supreme Court solely to blame for the ludicrously named 'civil rights movement'—that is, the Negro revolt.... But the Court carries its share of the blame."—National ReviewJune 2, 1964

"[T]he White community is so entitled because, for the time being, it is the advanced race."

"The South confronts one grave moral challenge. It must not exploit the fact of Negro backwardness to preserve the Negro as a servile class.... Let the South never permit itself to do this."

"[T]he South's premises are correct.... It is more important for the community, anywhere in the world, to affirm and live by civilized standards, than to bow to the demands of the numerical majority."—National Review, August 24, 1957

So Mike Nifong has been disbarred. For those not keeping up on their lawyer news, he's the District Attorney who pursued the Duke University Rape Case. The rich white lacrosse students (David Evans of Bethesda, Maryland, Reade Seligmann of Essex Fells, New Jersey, and Collin Finnerty of Garden City, New York) who had been accused of taking inappropriate liberties with a poor black female stripper were declared not guilty without a trial and were able to somehow quickly pierce the veil that usually protects prosecutors and destroy the career of a man who was acknowledged to never have previously done anything illegal or unethical.

Black people - and poor white people for that matter - actually wrongfully convicted and imprisoned for years, some on death row, can only dream of nailing the prosecutors (and police officers) who persecuted them sent them to prison, and some to death row, knowing all along that they were innocent. Once released, some of them can't even get financially compensated. And before DNA was around to exonerate those sentenced to death, for sure many innocent people must have undergone the ultimate penalty and paid with their lives for crimes they did not commit.

Not content to see him permanently removed from the field for which he trained and in which he worked for years, the spoiled lacrosse players and their parents are now mumbling about civil suits and criminal charges. And before anyone starts feeling all sorry for these pumped up rich kid jocks, were you aware that one of them was previously convicted of physically assaulting a man who he mistakenly thought was gay while screaming homophobic slurs? That would be Colin Finnerty (Towel Road
Advocate]).

And this May 28th article by sports reporter Philip Hersh - about the team itself - from the Chicago Tribune bears reading:

The idea that the Duke lacrosse team's success is a feel-good story makes me ill.

There is no allegory of redemption in having Duke play Johns Hopkins Monday for the NCAA men's title, and there is nothing to the notion that it is a just reward for an injustice perpetrated on the team last year.

The team suffered for its outrageous behavior, even if that behavior did not include the sexual assault three Duke players had been charged with committing.

After those charges were filed, Duke President Richard Brodhead canceled the rest of the team's 2006 season. That decision is as justifiable now as it was then.

The desire to empathize with the young men falsely charged and teammates made to feel guilty by association makes it easy to forget the circumstances that led to the problems.

*The Duke players hired exotic dancers for a party at which alcohol was served to minors. At the time, the lacrosse program had a recent history of alcohol-fueled boorishness that was a sad counterpoint to the players' often commendable academic and social service records.

*Some players allegedly yelled racial insults at the women.

*A couple of hours after the alleged assault, a player e-mailed teammates to say he planned to have some strippers over the next night, then went on to describe in grisly, graphic detail what he would do to them. The player was expelled from school but reinstated after a university official said the e-mail was sent "in jest" and represented only an error in judgment.

The rush to judgment about the three players charged with assault also was an error.

As he dropped the charges in April, North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper said, "... we believe these three individuals are innocent of these charges."

But it would be a bigger mistake to believe that means Duke's lacrosse team was innocent of assault against common decency.

I couldn't agree more. What a bunch of low-life losers.