Politics of Tragedy

And now the most telling two minutes in television, the latest from the political grapevine:

Politics of Tragedy

While Democrats have accused President Bush of exploiting September 11th for political ends,
Washington Post columnist David Broder writes that the president is -- "a piker compared with FDR when it comes to wrapping himself in the mantle of commander in chief."

In 1944, President Roosevelt accepted the Democratic nomination not from the Chicago convention but from the San Diego Naval Station, saying -- "the war waits for no elections. Decisions must be made, plans must be laid, strategy must be carried out."

The Convention's keynote speaker, meanwhile, said -- "The Republican Party...had no program, in the dangerous years preceding Pearl Harbor, to prevent war or to meet it if it came."

Extra-Court Activities

As conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia (search) takes heat for his involvements outside of court, the LA Times reports that liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg (search) has maintained strong ties to a women's rights organization that often argues cases before the court.

The National Organization of Women's Legal Defense and Education Fund co-sponsors the Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg Distinguished Lecture Series on Women and the Law, where Justice Ginsburg spoke two weeks after siding with the legal defense fund's brief in a medical case.

Federal judicial guidelines instruct judges to avoid pursuing activities where -- "impartiality might reasonably be questioned."

Praising Abbas

Palestinian Leader Yasser Arafat is praising convicted Palestinian terrorist Abu Abbas, who died this week in American custody in Iraq. Abbas headed the Palestinian Liberation Front and masterminded the 1985 hijacking of the Achille Lauro cruise ship in which wheelchair bound American tourist Leon Klinghoffer was shot and thrown overboard. Arafat called Abbas a martyr and a -- "distinguished fighter and a national leader who devoted his life to serve his own people and his homeland."

Stay out, America...

Landowners in a small German town have written President Bush asking the United States to stay off their property. They're worried that the president's recent pledge to build a lunar space station will bring unwanted visitors to their 700,000 square meter estates on the moon.

Twelve hundred town residents paid about $20 three years ago to buy the extra terrestrial land from an American businessman, who claimed that a loophole in the UN Outer Space Treaty gave him legal ownership of the moon. Now, many are now warning President Bush that they -- "don't want landing flags or rusting vehicles dumped on their land."

— FOX News' Michael Levine contributed to this report