With apologies to Jeff Foxworthy  You might be a liberal, if...

* You're sure the Constitution explicitly guarantees the right to abortion and gay marriage, but not the right to own a handgun.

* You think Dan Quayle is the dumbest Vice-President we ever had because he believed a flash card that misspelled "potato," but think Obama is a genius despite the fact he believes we have more than 57 states.

* You'd be more upset about your favorite candidate being endorsed by the NRA than the Communist Party.

* You think the same criminals who use guns in the commission of a crime will just hand them over to comply with the law if guns are made illegal.

* You know that 86% of all income taxes are paid by the top 25% of income earners and you still feel that the rich "aren't paying their fair share of the taxes."

* You put a higher priority on oil pipelines possibly inconveniencing a few caribou than you do on lowering the price of gas for everyone in the country by drilling ANWR.

* You're worried that Osama Bin Laden might not get a fair trial if we capture him, but want George Bush thrown in prison for being too zealous in protecting us from Al-Qaeda.

* You get infuriated when you hear about the CEO of a Fortune 500 company making tens of millions of dollars, but don't see a problem with an actor, basketball player, or trial lawyer making the same amount.

* You're constantly seeing subtle, coded racism in campaign ads, but see nothing racist about blacks being promoted over more qualified white applicants because of Affirmative Action.

* You think it's obscene that oil companies are allowed to make 8.3 cents per gallon in profit with gas prices this high, but would never suggest cutting the 13 cents per gallon they pay on taxes to reduce the price of gas.

* You think George Bush is a chickenhawk because he wanted to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan despite the fact that he only served in the National Guard, but you don't think the same about Barack Obama, who has never served in the military and probably couldn't find either country on a map without help.

* You think protesting outside of abortion clinics is extremism and should be illegal, but carrying around giant puppet heads while wearing a t-shirt that compares Bush to Hitler is just exercising your First Amendment rights.

* You think the case for global warming is proven without a shadow of a doubt, but that we need another century or two worth of evidence to figure out if capitalism and free markets work better than socialism.

* You believe the best way to fix the government screwing something up in the market is with...drumroll, please...more government intervention.

* You think the first thing we should have done when Russia invaded Georgia was to take the matter to the United Nations, where Russia sits on the UN Security Council.

* You spend your days criticizing the use of private jets, SUVS, and luxurious houses that consume enormous amounts of resources and then ride in an SUV to the airport, get on your private plane, and fly home to your luxurious house.

* You have more nice things to say about countries like Cuba and France than you do about your own country.

* You think the war in Iraq is unwinnable, but victory in the war on poverty is going to happen any day now if we can just get the Democrats back in charge.

* You won't even support English as our national language, but can't seem to understand why people worry about tens of millions of illegal aliens changing our culture.

* You think censorship is absolutely wrong; except when it's applied to conservatives on college campuses or on talk radio via the fairness doctrine.

* You get more upset about an American soldier accidentally killing a civilian than you do about a terrorist deliberately blowing up a school bus full of kids.

* You think Fox News is hopelessly biased to the right, but MSNBC, CNN, NBC, ABC, and CBS call it right down the middle.

* You think the real hero of the Cold War was Mikhail Gorbachev.

* You couldn't care less about what Americans in states like Kansas or Virginia think of you, but you would be greatly upset if a Frenchman gave you a dirty look because you're an American.

* You think kids in public schools should have to watch Earth in the Balance and read Heather Has Two Mommies, but no piece of literature with the word "Jesus" on it should be allowed within a hundred yards of a school.   (John Hawkins)

 - I can't understand 90 percent of what Bella the gymnast commentator says on the NBC Olympic coverage.

- Why yes, the Chinese are getting help from the judges.  If you don't think so, you didn't watch Thursday night.

IT HAPPENED ON THIS DAY

T H E      B R I E F

Barack Obama has yet to name a vice presidential nominee and some are wondering if he might turn to Massachusetts to round out the ticket.

John Kerry for vice president?

Don't dismiss the notion just yet.

Some political insiders are telling WBZ it could happen.

So why would Obama reach out to Kerry as his choice?

Kerry brings more money and name recognition to the table than any other name on the Obama list so far. Americans do tend to love a comeback kid and this would be the most amazing political comeback since Richard Nixon came back from the dead forty years ago.

If you're laughing off the idea of Kerry back on the national ticket again, I don't blame you. While he came close four years ago, his campaign was widely derided as, to put it politely, clumsy.

But consider some reasons why Obama might now turn to Kerry as a running mate.

Polls show many voters question Obama's foreign policy credentials to be a wartime president. As a decorated veteran and longtime member of the senate foreign relations committee, Kerry could fill that gap.

Obama suffers from being a new face on the political scene, but Kerry - warts and all - is well known to the voters, and in 2004, he did draw more votes than any democrat ever has.

And judging from a new anti-smear web site funded by Kerry's political action committee, Kerry would eagerly assume the role of attack dog... Allowing a nominee who prefers to float above the fray to minimize the amount of political hardball he has to play.

One other note: the vice presidential nominee will address the convention on Wednesday night, August 27.

The theme set for that evening - a salute to America's veterans.

The Obama campaign says we shouldn't read anything into that. We'll soon see if they're blowing smoke on that one.

_______________

The Federal Aviation Administration and Midwest Airlines understated the concerns held by the pilot of Barack Obama’s campaign plane when he first called in to make an unscheduled landing in St. Louis last month, according to a news report out Thursday.

The pilot of the plane was having trouble controlling the pitch of the plane and asked FAA air traffic controllers, “At this time we would like to declare an emergency and also have CFR (crash equipment) standing by in St. Louis,” according to tapes obtained by ABC News through a Freedom of Information Act request.

FAA spokeswoman Laura Brown told FOX News that the story is being overblown and said air traffic controllers mistakenly informed FAA officials that the pilot did not declare an emergency at the time, which they now realize was not the case.

She said her agency was not given the correct information initially, which happens from time to time, and FAA did not go back and review the tapes for accuracy.

“Information we get in real time is preliminary and may be subject to change when we get a fuller account of what happened,” Brown told The Associated Press. “We didn’t have any real reason to go back and question what we were told initially … Nobody called us to question that.”

Pilots set the plane down on July 7 after an emergency slide at the back of the plane deployed in flight just minutes after the MD80 took off from Chicago’s Midway International Airport en route to Charlotte, N.C.

_______________

The mother of missing Florida toddler Caylee Anthony could be out of jail as early as Monday because a bail bondsman is flying in to post her $500,000 bond, according to MyFOXOrlando.com.

The mother, Casey Anthony, 22, is behind bars in Orange County, Fla., on charges of child neglect and lying to police in Caylee's disappearance. The 3-year-old has been missing for nearly two months, and no traces of her have been found.

Leonard Padilla, owner of Tony Padilla Bail Bonds in Sacramento, Calif., said Friday that he and his nephew planned to fly to Orlando Sunday to post $500,000 to secure Anthony's release, MyFOXOrlando.com reported.

Anthony will have to be fitted with a court-ordered ankle monitoring device, which likely will delay her actual release from jail until Monday.

Padilla said he was contacted by Anthony's attorney, Jose Baez, along with an undisclosed third party a week ago.

The Anthony family has also retained a spokesman named Larry Garrison, known for his work on other high-profile cases.

Garrison has interacted with the media about the disappearance in Aruba of Alabama teenager Natalee Holloway and about the arrest of John Mark Karr after he falsely confessed to the murder of Colorado beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey.

 He is the president of a production company known as SilverCreek Entertainment and co-authored a book on Holloway.

_______________

President Bush on Friday accused Russia of "bullying and intimidation" in its harsh military treatment of Georgia, saying the people in the former Soviet republic have chosen freedom and "we will not cast them aside."

Bush ratcheted up his rhetoric against Moscow as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice pursued a diplomatic solution to the week-old crisis. Rice was in Tblisi for talks with pro-Western Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili about details of the cease-fire, which would require Russia to withdraw its combat forces from Georgia but allow Russian peacekeepers to remain in South Ossetia and conduct limited patrols outside the region.

"Georgia's sovereignty and territorial integrity must be respected," said Bush, speaking just outside the Oval Office before traveling to his Texas ranch for a two-week stay. Bush said he would get regular updates from Rice and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates about the continuing showdown between Moscow and Tibilisi over two separatist provinces in Georgia.

_______________

Iraqi Shiite explosive and assassination teams are being trained in at least four locations in Iran by Tehran's elite Quds force and Lebanese Hezbollah, according to intelligence gleaned from captured militia fighters and other sources in Iraq.

A senior U.S. military intelligence officer in Baghdad also said the fighters planned to return to Iraq in the next few months to kill specific Iraqi officials as well as U.S. and Iraqi forces.

The intelligence officer described the information Thursday in an interview with The Associated Press. He spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the intelligence information.

The officer on Wednesday provided Iraq's national security adviser with several lists of the assassination teams' expected targets. The country's intelligence service is now preparing operations to determine where and when the specially trained fighters will enter Iraq and will provide an assessment to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, the intelligence officer said.

Iran, Hezbollah's mentor, denies giving any support to Shiite extremists in Iraq.

_______________

John Edwards' political action committee paid his mistress $14,000 after she stopped working for it to obtain 100 hours of unused videotape she had shot for his unsuccessful presidential campaign, an associate told The Associated Press on Thursday.

The woman, Rielle Hunter, already had been paid $100,000 for the programs.

The explanation — which Edwards' advisers declined to discuss on the record — is the first effort to justify the payment in April 2007 to Hunter. That payment came months before Edwards' chief fundraiser quietly began sending money himself to the pregnant woman.

Cinderella, Snow White, Tinkerbell and other fictional fixtures of modern-day childhood were handcuffed, frisked and loaded into police vans Thursday at the culmination of a labor protest that brought a touch of reality to the Happiest Place on Earth.

The arrest of the 32 protesters, many of whom wore costumes representing famous Disney characters, came at the end of an hour-long march to Disneyland's gates from one of three Disney-owned hotels at the center of a labor dispute.

_______________

A 35-year-old Texas woman has been jailed after police say she made her 12-year-old daughter drive her to a bar.

Police in Longview say they watched a minivan turn into a driveway without signaling on Wednesday and bump into a home at a low speed. They say the car was driven by Jennifer Lynn Rosenberg's daughter.

Police say the girl told an officer she had just dropped her mother off at a bar. They say they found Rosenburg at the bar and that she admitted having her daughter drive her there.

Rosenburg remains in the Gregg County Jail on a $2,500 bond. A jail official declined to say whether she had an attorney.

A spokeswoman for Child Protective Services told the Longview News-Journal that the agency is investigating.

_______________

Federal officials say only six illegal immigrants volunteered to leave the United States in the first week of a pilot program inviting nearly a half-million people to self-deport.

The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement program is aimed at more than 450,000 illegal immigrants who have received but ignored court orders to leave the country and who also have no criminal records.

It is available in just five cities, including Phoenix, where an Estonian was among the six who signed up by Wednesday.

Officials say the program offers a less disruptive option than arrest and instant jailing by immigration agents who track down immigration fugitives at their homes or workplaces.

It gives those who participate up to three months to wrap up their personal affairs.

The other cities in the program are Santa Ana, Calif., San Diego, Chicago, and Charlotte, N.C. An Indian husband and wife and a Guatemalan signed up in Chicago, a Salvadoran volunteered in Charlotte and a Mexican in San Diego.

_______________

HUNTSVILLE, Texas —  A member of the infamous "Texas 7" gang of escaped fugitives was executed Thursday for killing a Dallas-area police officer during their weeks on the run.

Michael Rodriguez, who had dropped all appeals and volunteered for lethal injection, apologized profusely to the officer's widow and his own former sister-in-law before the lethal injection. He had been serving a life sentence for killing his wife at the time of the 2000 escape.

"My punishment is nothing compared to the pain and suffering I've brought you," Rodriguez said. "I'm not strong enough to ask for forgiveness. I ask the Lord to forgive. I've done horrible things that brought sorrow and pain to these wonderful people," he said, looking directly at the women.

"I'm sorry, so sorry," he said.

As the drugs took effect, Rodriguez, 45, was praying in a whisper. "I'm ready to go, Lord," he said.

Seven minutes later, at 6:20 p.m. CDT, he was pronounced dead. Outside the prison, several dozen police officers stood at attention while the execution was carried out, their hands clasped in front of them.

_______________

High hopes plummeted into fearful confusion in key Georgian cities Thursday as Russian troops appeared ready to pull out, then returned. Georgia's government said Russian tanks and other vehicles advanced toward the country's second-largest city but later stopped dozens of miles away.

Russia's Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, meanwhile, said the world "can forget about" Georgia getting back its two separatist provinces. And U.S. President George W. Bush demanded that Russia respect the "territorial integrity" of Georgia and urged it to honor a European-brokered cease-fire plan to end fighting that has displaced some 100,000 people.

_______________

ANDALUSIA, Ala. —  A complaint has been filed against a Covington County judge charging he violated judicial ethics rules by ordering a group in his courtroom to hold hands and pray.

The American Civil Liberties Union filed the complaint against Covington County Circuit Judge Ashley McKathan.

MaKathan made headlines four years ago when he started wearing the Ten Commandments embroidered on his judicial robe.

ACLU attorney Allison Neal said the complaint was filed with the Alabama Judicial Inquiry Commission after McKathan dropped to his knees and prayed aloud during a court hearing in Monroeville in February. The incident occurred in a case where the pastor and several deacons of Morning Star Missionary Baptist Church sued the church's former secretary to gain possession of financial records.

PAGE CONSTANTLY UPDATED 

What's  On  DRUDGE?

E - B R I E F

•  Spears, Brown, Jonas Brothers get MTV Awards nods
  NEW YORK (AP) -- After delivering one of the worst performances in the history of the MTV Video Music Awards, Britney Spears has a chance to be crowned this year as the absolute best....

• Trump to buy McMahon's home, let him live there
  BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. (AP) -- Donald Trump will soon be Ed McMahon's landlord....
  

• Jackson Browne sues McCain, RNC over song in ad
  LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Jackson Browne doesn't want John McCain running on anything fueled by his lyrics. The singer-songwriter sued McCain and the Ohio and national Republican committees in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles on Thursday, accusing them of using his song "Running on Empty" without his permission....
  

• Jerry Lewis says gun in baggage was a gift
  LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Jerry Lewis said a gun found in his carry-on and confiscated by Las Vegas police at the airport last month was a gift from an engraver following Lewis' annual telethon for the Muscular Dystrophy Association - despite an earlier claim by his manager that the weapon was a prop....
  

• Leonardo: Artist, inventor, matchmaker?
  ROME (AP) -- Born 500 years too early to put her photo on an online dating site, this young woman tried a different matchmaking approach - a portrait by Leonardo Da Vinci....
  

• Chris 'Mad Dog' Russo out at WFAN
  NEW YORK (AP) -- Chris Russo has left WFAN-AM, breaking up the sports talk giant's "Mike and the Mad Dog" show two weeks short of its 19th anniversary....
  

• Among Bernie Mac's last roles: Lion
  GLENDALE, Calif. (AP) -- In one of his final roles, Bernie Mac roars....
  

• DMX arrested after not showing at hearing
  PHOENIX (AP) -- A lawyer for DMX says the rapper has been arrested in Miami on a warrant for failing to attend a Phoenix court hearing....
  

• An awkward love triangle: Kate, Leo and Sam Mendes
  NEW YORK (AP) -- It was more than a little awkward for Kate Winslet to film sex scenes with Leonardo DiCaprio in front of husband Sam Mendes, who directed the stars in the upcoming drama "Revolutionary Road."...
  

• Christian Bale off the hook in assault case
  LONDON (AP) -- Christian Bale won't be charged in an alleged assault on his mother and sister, in part because they didn't want to press the matter but also for lack of sufficient evidence, prosecutors said Thursday....

P A R T I N G     S H O T

Sunset Lake Hefner