The Nightowl Newswrap

They've got a lot of damned gall calling themselves the "values voters" since HATE and BIGOTRY and RACISM are not "values" anyone should aspire to. People attending the Values Voter Summit snapped up boxes of waffle mix depicting Senator Obama as an exaggerated caricature on the front and in Arab attire on the top. The conference was sponsored by the lobbying arm of the Family Research Council - which has been preaching HATE as a family value since 1983. Does anyone else find it the least bit ironic that these family values types are backing the adulterer who abandoned his first wife and children and calls the second one a c*nt; over the guy with the healthy marriage who so obviously loves his wife and kids? Family values my ass. They covet power. Don't be scammed by these jackasses. I mean, they brought serial adulterer Newt Gingrich in as a featured speaker.

Federal Judge bans rental ban in Dallas suburb U.S. District Judge Jane Boyle issues a temporary restraining order against an ordinance that would have gone into effect today that would have required people seeking to rent apartments in the suburb of Farmers Branch to prove they were in the country legally. The ordinance was a mulligan, intended to replace a similar measure that was also struck down.

Mary Cheney gets her gay activism on Now that Daddy Dearest is at the end of his term as vice, she is joining the Log Cabin Republicans in an effort to stop "Proposition 8" in California, a ballot referendum that, if it passes, will re-ban gay marriage in California.

Military personnel are not campaign props as the Pentagon reminded Sarah Palin on Thursday when she brought scads of press to her sons deployment ceremony. "What we're trying to avoid is our troops being used as political pawns in a campaign and our bases being used as stages for electioneering," Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said. "The military has to stay out of the fray of politics; it has to remain apolitical. We go to great lengths to ensure that." Remind General Petraeus of that, too, in case he has it in mind to influence another election with a curiously timed editorial later this month. You know, like he did in 2004?



You go, girls! The couch on The View was the hottest seat McCain has been in lately, and something tells me that he was wishing he had an "eject" button within the first minute. He got absolutely grilled by Barbara Walters and Joy Behar called him a liar. Is the press corps sufficiently embarrassed now, and will they start doing their damned job instead of fluffing they BBQ buddy and bringing him donuts?

Arms dealer to the world As the days slip away and the pitiful bu$h administration mercifully draws to a close, they are pushing through scads of arms contracts - $32 Billion so far this year - and we aren't talking about guns 'n ammo here - we are talking about heavy armaments like tanks, helicopters, fighter jets, missiles, drones and even warships. The lions share of this heavy materiel is going to the Middle East.

Maybe his motives were not so pure It looks increasingly like Track Palin may have joined the Army to avoid going to prison for vandalizing 44 school buses in his hometown of Wasilla, Alaska by cutting the brake lines. If this bears out, it raises serious questions about the parenting skills of the woman who would be Veep.

Pet food recall: Mars Petcare US announced a voluntary recall Friday of all dry pet food products produced at its plant in Everson, Pa. between Feb. 18 and July 29, citing potential contamination with salmonella. Mars, in a news release, did not say how much pet food is involved, but said the recall reaches 31 states and various brands and said the action was taken as a precaution. "Even though no direct link between products produced at the Everson plant and human or pet illness has been made, we are taking this precautionary action to protect pets and their owners," the company statement said. Mars said it stopped production at the plant July 29 when it was alerted of a possible link between dry pet food produced in Everson and two isolated cases of people infected with salmonella.

Traffic now flowing through the Channel tunnel: Passengers and freight trundled again through the tunnel under the English Channel on Saturday, two days after a fierce undersea fire suspended service, injured 14 people and showed the fragility of Britain's only land link to the European continent. Passengers on the first Eurostar trains since the accident described the lingering smell of smoke in the tunnel and said the journey took longer than usual.

Human error: A commuter train engineer who ran a stop signal was blamed Saturday for the nation's deadliest rail disaster in 15 years, a wreck that killed 25 people and left such a mass of smoldering, twisted metal that it took nearly a day to recover all the bodies. A preliminary investigation found that "it was a Metrolink engineer that failed to stop at a red signal and that was the probable cause" of Friday's collision with a freight train in Los Angeles' San Fernando Valley, Metrolink spokeswoman Denise Tyrrell said. She said she believes the engineer, whose name was not released, is dead. "When two trains are in the same place at the same time somebody's made a terrible mistake," said Tyrrell, who was shaking and near tears as she spoke with reporters.

Don't throw it to the dog: Scientists have unearthed a camel jawbone in the Syrian desert that they think may be a previously unknown tiny species of the animal and say dates back a million years. The jawbone was found last month near the village of Khowm in the Palmyra region, about 150 miles northeast of Damascus, said Heba al-Sakhel, the head of the Syrian National Museum who was one of the leaders of the team of Syrian and Swiss researchers.

The circuit responsible for you being able to read this turns fifty: The computer chip industry on Friday celebrated the 50th birthday of the integrated circuit, a breakthrough that set the stage for the Internet and the Digital Age. A half-century ago a young engineer named Jack Kilby first demonstrated an integrated circuit he designed while working through the summer at his Texas Instruments job because he didn't have enough vacation time for a holiday. Kilby used a sliver of conductive germanium to connect a transistor and other bits, dubbing the soldered assembly an "integrated circuit" (IC). Engineer Robert Noyce was designing his own IC "in parallel" at Fairchild Semiconductor but didn't debut his creation until about six months later. Noyce went on to found US chip making giant Intel in 1968.