Big Dan's Big News Dec. 26, 2007

Red State Update with Democratic presidential candidate Mike Gravel:



Mike Gravel's 2008 election website (click here)

· Top 25 Censored Stories of 2008

· Disappointing Sales During Holiday Season

· Crisis may make 1929 look a 'walk in the park'; As central banks continue to splash their cash over the system, so far to little effect, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard argues things are rapidly spiralling out of their control

· A stark warning that human greed is threatening to destroy the environment was issued by the Archbishop of Canterbury in his Christmas message, while the leader of Roman Catholics in England and Wales appealed to people to be more welcoming to immigrants.

· GOP Christmapocracy...

· Mike Huckabee's Christmas ad -- like everything Huckabee does -- provoked all sorts of vehement, angry, un-Christmas-like attacks from Republican pundits. The GOP establishment almost uniformly claimed that the edges of the bookshelf behind Huckabee formed the shape of a cross, which -- along with Huckabee's mention of the word "Christ" -- rendered Huckabee guilty of making a highly inappropriate, overt religious appeal for votes. But here is the Christmas ad from John McCain, which features not a subliminal cross arguably lurking in the background, but instead, an explicit one drawn in the sand, serving as the centerpiece of the ad, and expressly referenced -- twice -- by the political candidate, whose face lingers wistfully next to the cross for 10 of the ad's 30 seconds:

· Ten Biggest Health Stories of 2007

· Many journalists qualified for the sixteenth annual P.U.-litzer Prizes, but only a few were able to win recognition for turning in one of the truly stinkiest media performances of the year. As the judges for this un-coveted award, we have done our best to confer this honor on the most deserving. And now, the winners of the P.U.-litzers for 2007:

· Pope laments 'grim sound of arms' in Iraq, other conflict zones

· ThinkProgress Year In Review: The 10 Most Popular Posts Of 2007

· How an "Ex-Gay" Minister Saw the Light; Scott Harrison left the Christian "sexual orientation therapy" movement when he realized he couldn't pray away the gay.

· Wisconsin Police Fingerprinting On Traffic Stops; If you’re ticketed by Green Bay police, you’ll get more than a fine. You’ll get fingerprinted, too

· Middle East censors seek to limit Web access; Governments in the Middle East are stepping up a campaign of censorship and surveillance in an effort to prevent an estimated 33.5 million Internet users from viewing a variety of Web sites whose topics range from human rights to pornography. As a result, millions of Middle Easterners are finding it harder by the day to access popular news and entertainment sites such as Facebook, MySpace, YouTube and Flickr.