I see everything American as good…Offshore, OCS drilling, ANWR drilling, yes, all of it. I want to see all of it. I want to get off of foreign oil. Yes, all of that.

A judge has ordered three teenagers to stand trial on charges related to the beating death of a Mexican immigrant in a small eastern Pennsylvania town.

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The teenager, Ben Lawson, 17, testified that Ramirez was fighting with one of the suspects, Derrick M. Donchak, when another, Colin Walsh, sucker-punched the victim. A third suspect, Brandon Piekarsky, then kicked Ramirez in the head while he lay motionless in the street.

Walsh, 17, and Piekarsky, 16, were charged as adults with homicide and ethnic intimidation. Donchak, 18, was charged with aggravated assault, ethnic intimidation and other offenses. All were football players at Shenandoah Valley High School.

A San Francisco city commission has taken a defiant stand against Mayor Gavin Newsom's directive on young immigrant felons by urging officials to permit the offenders to remain in the city and help pay for their housing, job placement services and immigration lawyers.

Newsom announced last month - in an attempt to quell a growing controversy involving San Francisco's sanctuary city policy - that the city would no longer shield young illegal immigrant felony offenders from federal authorities for possible deportation.

Three weeks later, the city's little-known, 15-member Immigrant Rights Commission approved a resolution that ran counter to the mayor's directive, urging the city to let young immigrant offenders stay in the city. The commission advises the Board of Supervisors and mayor about issues involving immigrants.

It called on San Francisco to pay nonprofit community groups to screen juvenile offenders to determine whether they should be entitled to city-paid immigration attorneys who would help them seek asylum as victims of abandonment, trafficking or abuse.

It also urged the city to provide adequate resources for placing the youths in "culturally appropriate" community programs approved by the juvenile court system, a policy that federal prosecutors have said was akin to harboring illegal immigrants.

And it advised the city to develop and expand safe housing, jobs and other opportunities for unaccompanied immigrant youth "because these youth are extremely vulnerable to exploitation by adult criminals."

A poll of nearly 2,000 Britons by YouGov/PHI found that 70 per cent of respondents incorrectly said it was true that the US had done a worse job than the European Union in reducing carbon emissions since 2000. More than 50 per cent presumed that polygamy was legal in the US, when it is illegal in all 50 states.

The poll was commissioned by America In The World , an independent pressure group that launches on Monday and aims to improve understanding and appreciation of the US in Britain and around the world.

Tim Montgomerie, its director, said factual inaccuracies and mistaken assumptions have contributed to Britons and Europeans taking a hostile stance towards their most powerful ally, which often acted against national interests.

"We wanted to find out how British people understood America and found that there was an unbalanced view. Maybe there are good reasons but if we cleared a lot of that factual ignorance we would have a better understanding of what America really is," said Mr Montgomerie, who also founded the influential ConservativeHome website three years ago.

Team Obama, in apparent recognition of McCain having the better night at Saddleback, responded by pushing the notion that their rival got wind of the questions.

NBC's Andrea Mitchell said on Meet the Press yesterday that "Obama people" were saying "that McCain may not have been in the cone of silence and may have had some ability to overhear what the questions were to Obama." The Democrat went first in the two-hour forum.

Headlines

In terms of weaponry, strategic and political positioning, and its ever-expanding international reach; Hezbollah is "five times more capable today," than it was at the beginning of the July 2006 war with Israel: A fact, according to experts, that prompted Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak to tell his troops during a Tuesday morning tour of positions along the Golan Heights, "It's not for nothing that we're training here."

"Democrat Barack Obama has received nearly six times as much money from troops deployed overseas at the time of their contributions than has Republican John McCain, and the fiercely antiwar Ron Paul, though he suspended his campaign for the Republican nomination months ago, has received more than four times McCain's haul," the report said.

The report also included this surprise: "Members of the armed services overall -- whether stationed overseas or at home -- are also favoring Obama with their campaign contributions in 2008. . . . Although 59 percent of federal contributions by military personnel have gone to Republicans this cycle, of money from the military to the presumed presidential nominees, 57 percent has gone to Obama."

IT took 16 years, but an anti-abortion Bob Casey will get to speak at the Democratic convention.

In 1992, then-Pennsylvania Gov. Robert Casey Sr., a devout Catholic, was barred from speaking at the Democratic National Convention. Party leaders claimed it was because he'd refused to endorse candidate Bill Clinton. But Casey maintained it was because of his anti-abortion views.

Yesterday, Barack Obama offered Sen. Bob Casey Jr. (D-Pa.) - also anti-abortion - a speaking slot at this year's convention.

The website claims that Obama did not support the state legislation because it lacked language "clarifying that the act would not be used to undermine Roe vs. Wade." The website cites Obama's assertion that he would have supported the similar federal born-alive bill, which included language clarifying that it would not undermine Roe v. Wade when it unanimously passed the Senate in 2001.

Wilkow: What do you make of Tim Kaine saying quote “It was a bad crisis for the world. It required tough words but also a smart approach to call on the international community to step in. And I’m very, very happy that the Senator’s request for a ceasefire has been complied with by President Medvedev.” You’ve got democrats who are claiming that the ceasefire happened because of Obama.

Peters: Obama has such an incredible ego problem at this moment. This guy didn’t even leave his Hawaiian vacation, and this is truly a world crisis…This guy stays on the beach, he issues a 90 second statement or a two minute statement on this thing. Nothing to do with what we said, what Sarkozy said, what world opinion said. No, the reason the Russians have stopped shooting was because Senator Obama decreed that the Russians would stop.

Listen, at this point I fully expect Senator Obama, on the way back from Hawaii to walk across the Pacific Ocean to California, and when he gets there before the Denver convention, he’ll probably take 10 or 15 minutes to find a cure for cancer, and also cure by the laying on of hands. The democrats are so utterly preposterous on issues like this.

George Clooney, one of Hollywood's most prominent backers of Democratic Sen. Barack Obama for president, has bought the movie rights to tell the story of Osama bin Laden's driver.

It may be a controversial project.

Clooney's movie production company, Smokehouse, bought the book rights from journalist Jonathan Mahler, who in "The Challenge" tells the story of Salim Hamdan, a Yemeni resident of the Guantanamo Bay detention facility in recent years after his capture for being the driver of Al Qaeda leader, Osama bin Laden.