Lawyers for the club's owners argued that striptease dancers were stage artists just like sword-swallowers and comedians and deserved the same status. "Striptease, in the way it is practiced in this case, is a form of dance combined with acting," the judges ruled, according to AFP news agency.
 

"After the Thanksgiving Day Massacre of Shiites by Sunnis, President Bush should go on Rupert Murdoch's Fox News and give an interview headlined: 'If I did it, here's how the civil war in Iraq happened,'" Dowd writes.

"He could describe, hypothetically, a series of naive, arrogant and self-defeating blunders, including his team's failure to comprehend that in the Arab world, revenge and religious zealotry can be stronger compulsions than democracy and prosperity," Dowd continues.

Excerpts from Dowd's column:

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But W. is not yet able to view his actions in subjunctive terms, much less objective ones. Bush family retainers are working to deprogram him, but the president is loath to strip off his delusions of adequacy.

W. declined to tear himself away from his free-range turkey and pumpkin mousse trifle at Camp David and reassure Americans about the deadliest sectarian attack in Baghdad since the U.S. invaded. More than 200 Shiites were killed and hundreds more wounded by car bombs and a mortar attack in Sadr City. October was the bloodiest month yet for civilians, and in the last four months, some 13,000 men, women and children have died.

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