SPB News for Saturday

Obama To Meet With Australian PM

Palin's 'Going Rogue' Sells 469K Copies In First Week

Hundreds Mark Anniversary Of Saddam's Death

Dean rips Lieberman over health care bill

Secret Service 'Deeply Concerned And Embarrassed' Over WH Crashers

Bloomberg Spent $102M In NYC Mayor's Race

Green Party To Nader: Run For Senate!
Ralph Nader, leader of countless protests during his decades of activism, is now reportedly himself facing picketers who want him to run for Senate.

Hoffman: I'll Run Again In 2010
On his website Thursday, NY-23 conservative Doug Hoffman laid out his reasons for deciding take on Rep. Bill Owens (D) again. Hoffman suggests again that the Nov. 3 special election was rigged in Owens' favor -- and then immediately apologizes to elections officials for offending them with the claim.

UK diplomat: US was 'hell bent' on Iraq invasion The United States was "hell bent" on a 2003 military invasion of Iraq and actively undermined efforts by Britain to win international authorization for the war, a former British diplomat told an inquiry Friday. Jeremy Greenstock, British ambassador to the United Nations from 1998 to 2003, said that President [sic] George W. Bush had no real interest in attempts to agree on a U.N. resolution to provide explicit backing for the conflict. The ex-diplomat, who served as Britain's envoy in Iraq after the invasion, said serious preparations for the war had begun in early 2002 and took on an unstoppable momentum.

Chilcot inquiry: Tony Blair decided on Iraq war a year before invasion - envoy Tony Blair's government decided up to a year before the Iraq invasion that it was "a complete waste of time" to resist the US drive to oust Saddam Hussein, opting instead to offer advice on how it should be done, the former British ambassador to Washington said today. Sir Christopher Meyer, testifying to the Chilcot inquiry into Britain's role in the war, made it clear that once the Bush administration decided to take military action, the Blair government never considered opting out or opposing it... British officials were left "scrabbling for the smoking gun" - evidence for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction - as preparations continued... The message from Downing Street was that the 11 September attacks and the subsequent US determination to oust Saddam were established facts, "and it was a complete waste of time … if we were going to work with the Americans, to come to them and bang away about regime change and say: 'We can't support it'."

ABA Backs Federal Court Trials of Alleged 9/11 Plotters The president of the American Bar Association sent a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. praising the decision to pursue federal court prosecutions of five Guantanamo detainees with [very] alleged ties to the 9/11 attacks. The Nov. 25 letter, signed by ABA President Carolyn Lamm, comes after Holder became the target of criticism from conservative politicians for his decision to try alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the others in New York.