An Iraqi journalist was sentenced to three years in prison for throwing shoes at former President George W. Bush.

Muntazer al-Zaidi, 30, appeared at the Iraq Central Criminal Court in Baghdad today and pleaded not guilty to charges of aggression against a foreign leader during an official visit, President Jalal Talabani’s Patriotic Union of Kurdistan said on the party’s Web site.

The correspondent for Al-Baghdadiya, an Iraqi-owned television station based in Cairo, threw his shoes at Bush on Dec. 14 during a news conference in the offices of Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki. Bush ducked and wasn’t struck.

German prosecutors said yesterday they intend to take action against an 88-year-old US resident for suspected involvement in the mass murder of 29,000 Jews, setting the stage for what could be the last major Nazi war crimes trial - in Adolf Hitler's former stronghold.
The trial in Munich of John Demjanjuk promises to deliver a finale to a tortuous saga of accusation and denial that has run for almost 30 years

Agreed that Douthat is well to the left of most self-styled conservatives when it comes to economic issues. For example, he supports more generous social programs to help traditional nuclear families. When it comes to reproductive rights, however, Douthat's right at home on the patriarchal fringe. Douthat claims to abhor abortion. If you take him at his word, an abortion is murder. Yet he stops short of backing enhanced access to contraception and sex ed, which he admits would reduce the number of abortions. Why? Because he thinks abortion would first have to be illegal in order to convince people (read: "poor, dumb, slutty women") that unplanned pregnancies are shameful enough to be worth preventing.