This Barack Obama action figure has become the unlikely Christmas toy hit among kids, say American retailers. 
And it has proved significantly more popular than a doll of Obama's defeated Presidential rival, Senator John McCain.
The racist skinhead logged on with exciting news: He'd just enlisted in the United States Army. 
John Byrne
You know how the Republicans in the Senate refused to spend $30 billion to bring the US auto industry back from the brink?
Even in 1860s Nevada Territory, newspaper readers had expectations and didn't always appreciate being trifled with. That's something young Sam Clemens learned the hard way, and it's the principal story told in Mark Twain: Unsanctified Newspaper Reporter, by James E. Caron, an English professor at the University of Hawaii. 
With president-elect Barack Obama already taking command of the financial crisis, it's tempting to think that regime change in America is a done deal. But if George Bush has his way, the country will be ruled by his slash-and-burn ideology for a long time to come.In its final days, the administration is rushing to implement a sweeping array of "midnight regulations" — de facto laws issued by the executive branch — designed to lock in Bush's legacy. Under the last- minute rules, which can be extremely difficult to overturn, loaded firearms would be allowed in national parks, uranium mining would be permitted near the Grand Canyon and many injured consumers would no longer be able to sue negligent manufacturers in state courts. Other rules would gut the Endangered Species Act, open millions of acres of wild lands to mining, restrict access to birth control and put local cops to work spying for the federal government.
"It's what we've seen for Bush's whole tenure, only accelerated," says Gary Bass, executive director of the nonpartisan group OMB Watch. "They're using regulation to cement their deregulatory mind-set, which puts corporate interests above public interests."
While every modern president has implemented last-minute regulations, Bush is rolling them out at a record pace — nearly twice as many as Clinton, and five times more than Reagan. "The administration is handing out final favors to its friends," says Véronique de Rugy, a scholar at George Mason University who has tracked six decades of midnight regulations. "They couldn't do it earlier — there would have been too many political repercussions. But with the Republicans having lost seats in Congress and the presidency changing parties, Bush has nothing left to lose."
Trying to sell a Senate seat is dumb. Not realizing that getting caught means you have to give up your seat as governor is dumber.
