'Vultures' Need Not Apply?

The latest from the Political Grapevine:

"Vultures" Need Not Apply?
New York is trying to encourage everybody to welcome the Republicans this week, but the protesters here aren't the only ones who didn't get the message. Some ads for city apartment rentals during the convention say Republican "vultures" need not apply.

And one ad, quoted by The Hill newspaper, tells Republicans to, "find some other apartment." What's more, many ads offer anti-Bush protesters places to stay for free, one saying, "[I] Want to do my part to drive a dagger into the heart of this vampiric regime."

"Deserter" Ditto
Michael Moore (search) is repeating his charge that President Bush (search) is a deserter, insisting, "It takes real courage to desert your post and then attack a wounded vet." In an online letter to President Bush, Moore says, "Even though your dad got you into a unit that would never be sent to Vietnam, and even though you didn't show up for Guard duty for at least a year, you were still in favor of the Vietnam War."

He then says John Kerry was "a man of privilege," too, who could have gotten out of the war, but, "true-blue Americans want a president who knows how to pull strings and ... get away with doing as little work as possible." Moore, by the way, is covering the Republican Convention as a columnist for USA Today.

Restrictions Rescinded
Amazon.com (search), which prohibits the public from writing personal attacks in their online book reviews, has lifted those restrictions for the anti-Kerry book "Unfit for Command," telling customers, "That policy in particular seems to be incompatible with presidential election year politics.

Therefore, short of obscenities, reviews on this book are now a free-for-all. ... Aren't presidential election years great? Have fun!"

Those restrictions, however, have not been lifted for John Kerry's biography, or for the book "Against All Enemies," by Bush critic Richard Clarke, to name a couple.

Cause for Concern?
An editor at Reuters, which refuses to use the word "terrorist" to describe the 9/11 hijackers, was quick to let the National Right to Life Committee know what he thinks of its cause.

The pro-life group sent out a press release criticizing partial birth abortion, and editor Todd Eastham fired back an e-mail from his work account demanding to know, "What's your plan for parenting and educating all the unwanted children you people want to bring into the world? Who will pay for policing our streets and maintaining the prisons needed to contain them when you, their parents and the system fail them? Oh, sorry. All that money has been earmarked to pay off the Bush deficit."

Eastham insists he was responding as a concerned citizen, not as an editor. A Reuters spokesman, however, says it is, "unfortunate [that he] chose to offer his personal opinion."

— FOX News' Michael Levine contributed to this report