Elsewhere, Stahl has a ball shredding the pieties of the abstinence-obsessed. "Pure" is a rollicking account of a born-again prostitute who carries a book of matches embossed with her personal credo, JIMP — "Jesus Is My Pimp."

"Only born-again girls in the Life knew what JIMP stood for," Stahl notes.

"Sometimes strangers would see her matches, recognize the letters and raise their hands before them, palms up, in secret recognition. It was like being a Mason who screwed sad men for a living."

His heroine, naturally, refuses to have vaginal sex with clients, because she's saving herself. "Here's the dirty little secret: sometimes, when a Christian girl says she is waiting for the right man, she means Jesus.

"There I said it: That's the hottie we're all waiting for. God's hunky Son!"   more »

Not since Harry Truman in the early 1950s has a president been as unloved for as long as Bush.

He slipped below the 50 per cent mark in spring 2005, and for the past year and a half, he has been stuck in the mid-30s.

In one poll he fell to 28 per cent, worse even than his father at his lowest before he lost to Bill Clinton in November 1992.

With public dissatisfaction over Iraq continuing to grow, and the "right track, wrong track" barometer showing an unprecedented 74 per cent of Americans convinced the country is heading in the wrong direction, Bush will probably remain deeply unpopular for the 18 months remaining until he leaves office in January 2009.   more »

Paris Hilton does her time, while Scooter Libby gets to scoot out of his punishment.

And totally too, because his legal defense fund will no doubt cover his $250.000 fine.

Also, what does he need his legal degree for anyway? The people he worked for thumbed their nose to the law. And, the boss he covered for, will make sure he’s amply repaid with some lucrative corporate job.

And if that weren’t bad enough, the President will probably eventually pardon him before he leaves office anyway, making this whole episode even uglier.   more »

Two hundred and thirty years after the revolution against British colonialism that brought it into being, the government of the United States is waging a colonial war aimed at subjugating the people of Iraq and appropriating that country’s oil wealth.

In his own defense, King George could at least argue that he was fighting to preserve an existing empire and defend his rule over lands and subjects long recognized as British.

The US colonial venture in Iraq, on the other hand, is an unprovoked war of aggression launched on the basis of lies about nonexistent weapons of mass destruction and terrorist ties.

Inevitably, it is producing all of the horrors and crimes associated with such interventions, with the soldiers sent to kill and die on the basis of these lies becoming ever more brutalized, leading to an unending series of war crimes.   more »

Alan Johnston paid tribute to Hamas, the Palestinian people and Palestinian journalists in particular.

"I could sense how much they were pressing for my release. Prime minister Ismail Haniyeh was very clear that I was a guest of the Palestinian people.

"I know the Hamas leadership put a huge amount of pressure on the kidnappers. If it had not been for that pressure then I might have been left in that room for a lot longer," he said.

Having staked its reputation on freeing Johnston, Hamas was keen to reap the political dividends from his release.

Mr Haniyeh presented Johnston with a scarf in Palestinian colours, a copper plaque of the Dome of the Rock and a Palestinian lapel badge.   more »