Bring Me Rombler

Romneycop as Veep?

In a surprise to many Republican insiders, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney is at the top of the vice presidential prospect list for John McCain. But lack of personal chemistry could derail the pick.

“Romney as favorite” is the hot buzz in Republican circles, and top party advisers said the case is compelling.

Campaign insiders say McCain plans to name his running mate very shortly after Barack Obama does, as part of what one campaign planner called a “bounce-mitigation strategy.”

The Democratic convention is in late August, a week ahead of the Republican convention. That means McCain can size up the opposing ticket before locking in his own.
McCain campaign staffers declined to comment, saying McCain has made it clear they are not to discuss the matter.

Mitt Romney's overpolished slickness may be a good counterpart to the Straight Talk Express. Every presidential campaign should have at least one programmable cyborg on the ticket.

The Running Man

Now I know sports is gay:

Some far-right sites that subscribe to the Associated Press feed, for example, will use auto-correct to change “Democratic Party” to “Democrat Party.” This, of course, is because they have the temperament of children.

But the American Family Association’s OneNewsNow website takes the phenomenon one step further with its AP articles. The far-right fundamentalist group replaces the word “gay” in the articles with the word “homosexual.” I’m not entirely sure why, but it seems to make the AFA happy. The group is, after all, pretty far out there.

The problem, of course, is that “gay” does not always mean what the AFA wants it to mean. My friend Kyle reported this morning that sprinter Tyson Gay won the 100 meters at the U.S. Olympic track and field trials over the weekend. The AFA ran the story, but only after the auto-correct had “fixed” the article.

That means — you guessed it — the track star was renamed “Tyson Homosexual.” The headline on the piece read, “Homosexual eases into 100 final at Olympic trials.”

Who knew that Fundamentalists would one day be peddling sports porn?

Gray Area

TV is so old.

According to a study released by Magna Global's Steve Sternberg, the five broadcast nets' average live median age (in other words, not including delayed DVR viewing) was 50 last season. That's the oldest ever since Sternberg started analyzing median age more than a decade ago -- and the first time the nets' median age was outside of the vaunted 18-49 demo.

Fueling the graying of the networks: the rapid aging of ABC, NBC and Fox. The three nets continue to grow older, while CBS -- the oldest-skewing network -- has remained fairly steady.

'The median ages of the broadcast networks keep rising, as traditional television is no longer necessarily the first screen for the younger set,' Sternberg wrote.

So does this mean that CBS has actually been ahead of its time all these years?

The Post-Bush Era Begins Now

Andrew Sullivan, on what this election really means.

We will not elect another Bush, or his appointed successor, or someone closely allied to him in certain key areas - climate, torture, full-throated conservative Christianism, reckless war-making. The electorate has already purged this legacy from the system, in so far as it can with an incumbent still-president.

Among the Republicans, it is easy to forget that there were several viable candidates who were utterly unapologetic about the Iraq war, who favored torture and detention policies indistinguishable from Cheney-Bush (or worse), who intended to run either as an even less restrained executive (Romney, Giuliani), or as an even less moderate Christianist (Romney, Huckabee). On the Democratic side, the rejection of the Clintons, with all their baggage, all their capacity to jump-start the culture wars, and all their unending '90s psychodrama was also an enormous, and by no means inevitable, step forward - and away from the worst of the past.

So in many respects, the vital expressive work of this election is already done; and the electorate has already spoken. By nominating Obama - the antithesis of Bush - and McCain - Bush's former defeated rival, the Bush-Rove era is already over in the deepest sense. If we had an incumbent Bush vice-president - or a Romney or Giuliani on the ticket - it would feel a lot different. Now, we have the more palatable choice of the post-Bush or the really un-Bush. No wonder a sense of relative relief.

The future is now. No wonder the Hugh Hewitts and Sean Hannitys of the world are so upset. They know their era is coming to an end and don't like it one bit.

Bloggin' In The Years: 1979

Lately it seems everybody wants one.

Western intelligence experts believe that Pakistan has been trying for at least 15 years to develop a nuclear bomb, primarily to strengthen its defenses against neighboring India. When New Delhi tested its first atomic bomb in 1974, Islamabad stepped up its own efforts. The late Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who was then Pakistan's Prime Minister, warned that 'we will eat leaves and grass, even go hungry' to build the country's own weapon. 'There's a Hindu bomb, a Jewish bomb and a Christian bomb,' Bhutto once wrote. 'There must be an Islamic bomb.'

The last time I checked, the bomb was an equal opportunity weapon of mutually assured destruction.

Who needs the Arabs when you've got local thieves?

Prices have ranged from the official rates of around $1 to as high as $1.70 per gal. at a few stations in New York City and Boston. Some station owners have justified these rates by saying that they had to pay more than $1.25 to wholesalers, but most were charging what the market would bear—i.e., a black market. The major oil companies are not involved in the black market. "We have too many auditors looking over their shoulders," says a DOE regulator.

Price gouging can be punished by a fine of $10,000. A retailer in Boston who charged $1.57 for unleaded was hit with a civil suit by federal officials; a U.S. District Court ordered him to roll the price back 70¢. Despite such actions, however, black marketeers vastly outnumber DOE inspectors. "If we ever have the personnel and the time to investigate, we could uncover some incredible stuff," says a DOE official. But the department, which is scheduled to have 800 inspectors by mid-1980, needs thousands to enforce the scheduled prices. It has little prospect of getting them.

Wait until it reaches over two dollars a gallon. We'll have a revolution on our hands.

Is the world headed for a population bust?

The world's fertility rate is dropping, the United Nations Fund for Population Activities reported last week, principally because of delayed marriages and decisions to have smaller families. The U.N. study notes that most governments now recognize the need for comprehensive population policies. Even so, by the end of this decade alone there will be an estimated 738 million more people alive than there were in 1970. By the year 2000 more than 6 billion people will inhabit the planet, twice as many as in 1960.

(snip)

At the same time, Third World birth rates are dropping, although they are still far above replacement level. This is not so in much of the First World: such countries as the U.S. and Japan are only slightly above zero population growth. The result: a "rising average age of the population and increasing proportions of the aged." The phenomenon will require a shift in social spending from child health and education to welfare systems for the old, but a smaller working population will have to bear the increasing cost. Moreover countries with dwindling populations, the report suggests obliquely, may face necessary "changes in political attitudes toward immigration."

From too many to too old. There's a comforting thought.

Ghost Port

A climate tax takes its toll:

Some 50,000 fewer passengers are expected to use Amsterdam Schiphol airport, one of Europe's busiest, this summer on account of a Dutch environmental tax on flights, it was reported Saturday.

'We're expected zero growth in 2008, and in fact a decrease (in passenger numbers) in July and August,' an airport spokesman was quoted as saying by the domestic ANP news agency.

The Netherlands is the only country that levies an environmental tax on flights departing the country -- 11.25 euros per passenger (17.75 dollars) for European destinations and 45 euros for intercontential points.

They won't have any tourists, but at least the Netherlands can claim to be green.

Hussein Like Me

What's in a name? Everything, when it's your favorite candidate.

Emily Nordling has never met a Muslim, at least not to her knowledge. But this spring, Ms. Nordling, a 19-year-old student from Fort Thomas, Ky., gave herself a new middle name on Facebook.com, mimicking her boyfriend and shocking her father.

“Emily Hussein Nordling,” her entry now reads.
With her decision, she joined a growing band of supporters of Senator Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, who are expressing solidarity with him by informally adopting his middle name.

The result is a group of unlikely-sounding Husseins: Jewish and Catholic, Hispanic and Asian and Italian-American, from Jaime Hussein Alvarez of Washington, D.C., to Kelly Hussein Crowley of Norman, Okla., to Sarah Beth Hussein Frumkin of Chicago.

(snip)

Mr. Obama is a Christian, not a Muslim. Hussein is a family name inherited from a Kenyan father he barely knew, who was born a Muslim and died an atheist. But the name has become a political liability. Some critics on cable television talk shows dwell on it, while others, on blogs or in e-mail messages, use it to falsely assert that Mr. Obama is a Muslim or, more fantastically, a terrorist.

“I am sick of Republicans pronouncing Barack Obama’s name like it was some sort of cuss word,” Mr. Strabone wrote in a manifesto titled “We Are All Hussein” that he posted on his own blog and on dailykos.com.

So like the residents of Billings, Mont., who reacted to a series of anti-Semitic incidents in 1993 with a townwide display of menorahs in their front windows, these supporters are brandishing the name themselves.

“My name is such a vanilla, white-girl American name,” said Ashley Holmes of Indianapolis, who changed her name online “to show how little meaning ‘Hussein’ really has.”

I can see their point-Obama's middle name has been used as a punching bag by talk radio and right-wing blogs and forums. But this is exactly the sort of thing white liberals do that makes them look like white liberals. In spite of what certain commentators hope, Obama's middle name most likely won't matter any more than the rumors that he's a closet Muslim. So why should it matter to people who claim that it doesn't?

Just Say No

The trend against reality is being reversed.

Skeptical states are shoving aside millions of federal dollars for abstinence education, walking away from the program the Bush administration touts for slowing teen sexual activity.

Barely half the states are still in, and two more say they are leaving.

Some $50 million has been budgeted for this year, and financially strapped states might be expected to want their share. But many have doubts that the program does much, if any good, and they're frustrated by chronic uncertainty that it will even be kept in existence. They also have to chip in state money in order to receive the federal grants.

Iowa Gov. Chet Culver, a Democrat, made his decision to leave based on the congressionally mandated curriculum, which teaches 'the social, psychological and health gains of abstaining from sexual activity.' Instructors must teach that sexual activity outside of marriage is likely to have harmful psychological and physical effects.

'It was just too strict,' said Emily Hajek, policy adviser to Culver. 'We believe local providers have the knowledge to teach what's going to be best in those situations, what kind of information will help those young people be safe. You cannot be that prescriptive about how it has to be taught.'

Much of abstinence only education seems to be a combination of wishful thinking and moralistic finger-wagging. If real health advice can make a comeback in our schools, that's a good thing.

The Buzz

A guy who's actually been there warns that we're losing the next space race.

Mr Aldrin, 78, said: 'To me it's abysmal that it has come to this: after 50 years of Nasa, and after putting about $100 billion into the space station, we can't get our own astronauts to our space station without relying on the Russians.'

He said his message to the next president is this: 'Retain the vision for space exploration. If we turn our backs on the vision again, we're going to have to live in a secondary position in human space flight for the rest of the century.'

He added: 'These are important issues for consideration by the potential leaders of our country. They're not welcome criticisms for the present heads of NASA.'

Earlier this month Rick Gilbreth, the head of the space agency's lunar exploration programme, warned that Chinese astronauts were on schedule to get to the moon by 2017 or 2018, two or three years before America is due to return.

Mr Aldrin said: 'All the Chinese have to do is fly around the Moon and back, and they'll appear to have won the return to the Moon with humans. They could put one person on the surface of the Moon for one day and he'd be a national hero.'

We don't have the Cold War-era imperative to get into space anymore, but we do have significant economic and even national security reasons for doing so. Part of the problem is that NASA is still running things like a government bureaucracy instead of a business opportunity in the making. We're getting left behind, and it's mostly our own fault. Whether we can catch up will depend on if NASA can change its ways or not.

Where The War Continues

Who says we need to refocus on Afghanistan? Barack Obama? No, those durn libruls at the Pentagon.

Violence in Afghanistan will continue to rise this year, as Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters have proved resilient and aggressive foes against coalition forces, according to a new Pentagon report issued to Congress yesterday.

Citing a weak Afghan government, struggling economy, massive increases in illegal narcotics production, corruption, growing attacks by insurgents and an increase in civilian casualties, U.S. defense officials said incremental progress in Afghanistan contrasts with significant challenges ahead. The 72-page report, which reviews the war from 2001 through April 10, 2008, offers a bleak assessment of a conflict that commanders think requires more resources and attention.

'Despite many positive developments, Afghanistan continues to face challenges,' the report said. 'The Taliban regrouped after its fall from power and have coalesced into a resilient insurgency. It now poses a challenge to the Afghan government's authority in some rural areas. . . . The Taliban is likely to maintain or even increase the scope and pace of its terrorist attacks and bombings in 2008.'

Do we just go back and forth between these two countries for the next several years? Or do we come up with a comprehensive strategy that shows we're serious about winning the Great War On Terror? The next president will have four to eight years to show us.

The Whisper War

Ima Dinnerjacket may be looking over his shoulder more and more these days for a reason.

Late last year, Congressional leaders agreed to a request from President Bush to fund a major escalation of covert operations against Iran, and charges that the administration is running 'cross border' operations into Iran, The New Yorker magazine reported.

In an article published online Sunday, the magazine cites current and former military, intelligence, and congressional sources and said the operations were described in a highly classified Presidential Finding signed by Bush and are designed to destabilize the country’s religious leadership.

The State Department's top official in Iraq is refuted the report that special operations forces are conducting cross-border operations from Iraq into Iran.

'I can tell you flatly U.S. forces are not operating across the border in Iran,' U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker said on a morning cable news show.

The New Yorker piece by Seymour Hersh, says: 'United States Special Operations Forces have been conducting cross-border operations from southern Iraq, with Presidential authorization, since last year. These have included seizing members of Al Quds, the commando arm of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, and taking them to Iraq for interrogation, and the pursuit of 'high-value targets' in the President’s war on terror, who may be captured or killed.'

The White House did not comment on the article. And one administration official, who asked not to be identified, dismissed the piece: 'We've declined comment on Hersh's quarterly articles. You can almost tell time by them.'

It may be Hersh, but even a broken clock, et cetera et cetera.

Going To Plan B

The Republicans have some new rules for saving "The Brand":

A new playbook for House Republicans urges them to run essentially as independents, showing empathy for voters, emphasizing local issues and ignoring many traditional party campaign practices.

The advice for House candidates is part of an effort to minimize Republican losses in a year when voters are exasperated by the economy, the Iraq war and President Bush:

“Encourage Republican candidates to establish themselves in a personal manner, emphasizing local issues whenever possible.”

“Candidates have to have a positive alternative vis-à-vis their Democratic opponents.”

“Work to develop an issues matrix that is different than in years past and also shows a deep empathy towards the voters.”

The advice, from consultants to the National Republican Congressional Committee, was presented this week to House leaders, including NRCC Chairman Tom Cole (R-Okla.).

I would add get back to fiscal responsibility, dump the fundamentalist wingnut mentality and support the rule of law. Do those things and they may have something.

Bubba Bites Back

Obama and Hillary may be making nice, but not Bill.

Mr Obama is expected to speak to Mr Clinton for the first time since he won the nomination in the next few days, but campaign insiders say that the former president's future campaign role is a 'sticking point' in peace talks with Mrs Clinton's aides.

The Telegraph has learned that the former president's rage is still so great that even loyal allies are shocked by his patronising attitude to Mr Obama, and believe that he risks damaging his own reputation by his intransigence.

A senior Democrat who worked for Mr Clinton has revealed that he recently told friends Mr Obama could 'kiss my ass' in return for his support.

A second source said that the former president has kept his distance because he still does not believe Mr Obama can win the election.

Gee, Bill, bitter much?

People For The Unethical Treatment Of Celebrities

Now they've declared war on the rich and famous.

Animal rights protesters have launched a series of angry campaigns against A-list carnivores. They are shifting their focus from celebrities who wear fur to others who encourage the 'exploitation' of animals by eating them. In its latest campaign, Peta – People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, which became infamous for dousing fur-wearers in red paint – has launched an attack on the singer Jessica Simpson.

Ms Simpson was singled out for ridicule after she was spotted wearing a T-shirt bearing the slogan 'Real Girls Eat Meat', believed to be a light-hearted dig at her boyfriend Tony Romo's vegetarian ex-girlfriend, Carrie Underwood.

Alistair Currie, a spokesman for Peta, said: 'Jessica Simpson might have a right to wear what she wants, but she doesn't have a right to eat what she wants – eating meat is about suffering and death. Some people feel like they are standing up against a tide of political correctness when they make a statement like this – what she is really doing is standing up for the status quo.'

The animal rights group doctored a photo of Ms Simpson to read 'Only Stupid Girls Eat Meat', and listed 'five reasons only stupid girls eat meat'.

I could come up with a list of my own: "Five reasons only stupid people join PETA."

Clash Of The Thin-Skinned

Call it "When Blowhards Attack."

For those who have somehow ignored this food fight, Olbermann started it by regularly jabbing at O'Reilly and naming him the "Worst Person in the World," a nightly segment on his MSNBC talker.

Thin-skinned in his best days, O'Reilly has grown especially sensitive to criticism (or as he's prone to call it, "vicious personal attacks," emanating from "vile left-wing smear sites") since the embarrassment of having a sexual-harassment suit filed against him in 2004. That irritation has rather transparently led him to retaliate against NBC higher-ups, including NBC News and even parent General Electric, going so far as to have a producer ambush GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt, stretching to accuse him of shady dealings with Iran and, this week, of personally despoiling the Hudson River.

All of this has been fodder for Olbermann, who has gone public with claims that O'Reilly and Fox News CEO Roger Ailes have threatened retaliation if NBC doesn't rein him in.

News Corp.'s assault, whether coordinated or not, is now happening. The company's New York Post Page Six column has joined the fray with several unflattering items about Olbermann. Those rumors are then parroted by Fox News' dimwitted morning show, "Fox & Friends," creating a circular echo chamber.

Olbermann responded, of course, by preemptively lashing out against the Post on air, calling Page Six "entirely disreputable" and crowning Richard Johnson and Paula Froelich, at separate moments, as the "Worst Person." Nor has Rupert Murdoch -- who Olbermann impersonates by affecting a snarling pirate voice -- escaped his wrath.

Murdoch was recently quoted noting that he fired Olbermann from Fox Sports several years ago, saying, "He's crazy." For her part, Froelich told Gawker that Olbermann is "as infantile as he is narcissistic."

Personally, O'Reilly and Olbermann both seem to be behaving like blooters over this.

Obama's Bible Belt

On one of the thorniest isues where Republicans have traditionally had an advantage, Obama could win big if he wanted to.

If he moved to the center on abortion, a knowledgeable religion journalist remarked to me last week, he could win half of evangelicals under 40. But can he move to the center on abortion - by flip-flopping on partial-birth abortion, say, while making a big deal about embracing the (largely-symbolic) abortion-reduction plan being pressed by Democrats for Life -- after a bruising primary campaign in which he barely beat out a feminist icon with unimpeachable pro-choice bona fides? I've assumed that the answer is no and no again, not least because he's already ahead in the polls, and doesn't need to look for potentially gamechanging maneuvers that might blow up in his face. But if Obama wants a historic mandate, rather than a narrow win -- if he wants to cut the heart out of the GOP coalition and leave the Republicans for dead -- then breaking with his party's abortion orthodoxy to go hard after the evangelical vote is one obvious way to do it.

Many Democrats have already been bucking their Party's trend on social issues, and they're the ones who have been winning elections. If Obama is more willing to follow their lead rather than the standard party line, it could represent a real seismic shift in the type of audience the Democrats could get.

Let Them Eat Dirt Cakes

When saving the planet becomes more important than the people who live on it.

The human cost of the global biofuel switch was put in stark terms today by international advocacy group Oxfam, which released a report saying biofuels are responsible for pushing 30 million people into poverty (International Herald Tribune, Reuters and BBC coverage). The widely noted report asserts that the increasing use of grains as biofuel feedstocks is responsible for 30 percent of the increase in food prices, and that’s hitting the world’s poorest hard.

The report, written by Oxfam biofuel policy adviser Rob Bailey, urges developed nations to abandon their biofuel mandates and get rid of the subsidies and tariffs on biofuels that are destroying the ability of the market to appropriately adjust biofuel and food supply and demand. These economic hurdles have lead to an all-time low in grain reserves, the report says, and pushed food prices to record highs.

Well, crops for people is wrong. Crops for the cars of limosine liberals isn't.

Axis Minus One

Sometimes "Appeasement" does work:

YONGBYON, North Korea (AP) - The gray cooling tower crumbled behind billowing dust clouds in seconds Friday, reducing the structure at North Korea's nuclear reactor into a pile of rubble. It was a choreographed show by the communist regime meant to affirm an intention to stop making atomic bombs.

From a distance, smiling diplomats from the United States and other nations snapped photos of the blast that destroyed part of the heart of the North's nuclear weapons program.

'As you all saw, the cooling tower is no longer there,' said Sung Kim, the U.S. State Department's top expert on the Koreas who attended the demolition. 'This is a very important step in the disablement process, and I think it puts us in a good position to move into the next phase.'

The 60-foot-tall cooling tower at the Yongbyon nuclear center had been the most visible symbol of the North's nuclear program and a focus for U.S. satellite surveillance. Steam spewing from the tower meant that the North's main nuclear reactor was operating to make plutonium.

Scratch one member of the Axis of Evil off the list. Could Obama do the same with Iran, or would it only be OK if a Republican president did things this way?

Let Her People Go

There's one less scumbag off the streets.

Varsha Sabhnani, 46, was convicted with her husband in December on a 12-count federal indictment that included forced labor, conspiracy, involuntary servitude and harboring aliens.

The trial provided a glimpse into a growing U.S. problem of domestic workers exploited in slave-like conditions.

The victims testified that they were beaten with brooms and umbrellas, slashed with knives, and forced to climb stairs and take freezing showers as punishment. One victim was forced to eat dozens of chili peppers against her will, and then was forced to eat her own vomit when she couldn't keep the peppers down, prosecutors said.

U.S. District Judge Arthur Spatt called the testimony 'eye-opening, to say the least - that things like that go on in our country.'

'In her arrogance, she treated Samirah and Enung as less than people,' said Assistant U.S. Attorney Demetri Jones. 'Justice for the victims: That's what the government is asking for.'

Where was Abraham Lincoln when you needed him?

Bloggin' In The Years: 1966

Does he actually make sense, or is Governor Romney just rambling?:

As a front runner for the 1968 Republican presidential nomination, Michigan's Governor plainly feels that the time has come to grope his way into the unfamiliar arena of foreign policy. His Cleveland speech, with its echoes of Senator William Fulbright's 'arrogance of power' theme, was a curious blend of old-fashioned Midwestern isolationism and the liberal's equally irrelevant preoccupation with world opinion. Even on the specific issue of Viet Nam, Romney could only offer tired generalities.

At the Midwest Governors Conference in Cincinnati, he told reporters that President Johnson 'made a great mistake by getting involved in a large-scale land war' and that 'we are in the process of making a second mistake by making it primarily an American war.' He proposed 'an honorable settlement' but did not suggest how one could be achieved. In fact, he maintained, 'I don't think you can bring the North Vietnamese to the bargaining table by showing them they can't win.'

A former officiary of the Mormon church, he was on surer ground moralizing about what he considers the nation's most pressing problem, the disintegration of the American family. 'There has been a decline,' he told his fellow Governors, 'in the faith, belief and principles on which America was built.' The solution? 'Personal responsibility, family responsibility and private institutional responsibility—and the place to start is in the home.'

when it comes to foreign policy and military intervention, Romney seems to harken back to the days of Eisenhower. The war has turned into a distraction from President Johnson's domestic policies, which most liberals still support. The question is, will they still support him in '68?

Think the Miranda ruling will give you a get out of jail free card? Think again.

Ever since Escobedo, many a confessed and convicted criminal had seen the possibility of retroactivity as a hope of getting his case back into court. And now, with Miranda to remind police that just about any question a suspect answers without a lawyer's advice is improper unless he waives his rights, that hope seemed bright indeed. Writing for a 7 to 2 majority, Warren relocked the prison doors. To reopen past cases, he said, "would seriously disrupt the administration of our criminal laws. It would require the retrial and release of numerous prisoners found guilty by trustworthy evidence in conformity with previously announced constitutional standards."

(snip)

Few observers were surprised by the court's rebuff to Cassidy and Johnson. What did startle many a lawyer was the court's statement that it would not apply Miranda, even to appeals that are now pending. Thus, Miranda and his companions of two weeks ago may get new trials; everybody else tried when they were, stays in prison. The strict new rules it laid down in Miranda, the court said, apply "only to cases in which the trial began after the date of our decision."

So much for opening the floodgates. Miranda merely reaffirmed an already existing right to have one's rights explained and to have an attorney present during questioning. It does not apply to old cases where the prosecutions were valid. So there.

The Blue Dog Revolution

A "New Democrat" explains why the Republicans are getting their butts kicked.

In Conley's mind, conservatives have no place in the GOP anymore: They've been bamboozled by politicians who do nothing on their issues once they're safe in office. 'Bush could have passed a marriage amendment,' Conley said. 'If he wanted something, he got it, and he got it as soon as he wanted it. The so-called PATRIOT Act? Introduced on a Tuesday, passed through the chambers on Thursday, and headed to his office. We were in the back of the bus, then they took the seat out of the bus and put us on a two-by-four, and then they removed the 2x4. I mean, you've got to cut the chain sometime.'

On the war on drugs, Conley discoursed for a full minute on the history of marijuana criminalization and said, to understand his views, to 'take a look at Clarence Thomas's dissent in Raich.'

On FISA: 'No way does anyone deserve immunity for what they did. The country I grew up in had a fourth amendment, plain and simple.'

Unfortunately, the Republicans opted for complex and arcane instead.

It's Back

The Federal Marriage Amendment is back, and two of its sponsors are (drumroll please):

But the funny part is looking over the list of the 10 original sponsors. Most of the names are predictable — Brownback and Inhofe, for example — but there are two others whose names stand out: Sens. David Vitter (R-La.) and Larry Craig (R-Idaho).

Yes, two of the principal sponsors of a constitutional amendment to “protect” marriage include one far-right Republican who hired prostitutes and another far-right Republican who was arrested for soliciting gay sex an airport men’s room.

You couldn't make this stuff up if you tried.

You Gotta Have Faith

Bad news for the fundamentalist crowd:

Pew scholars said the most politically relevant finding is the fact that, as the 294-page report says, “Americans have a non-dogmatic approach to faith” — that is, a large majority of nearly every religious group believes there are other paths to salvation.

According to the study, “Seventy percent of Americans with a religious affiliation say that many religions — not just their own — can lead to eternal life. Most also think there is more than one correct way to interpret the teachings of their own faith.”

In politics, that means that coalitions are possible among members of divergent religious groups.

Luis Lugo, director of the Pew Forum, said: “Most people will be surprised that a majority of adherents in nearly all religious traditions, including a majority of evangelical Protestants, say that there isn’t just one way to salvation or to interpret the teachings of their own faith.”

And you can even accept that evolution stuff, too. What a country.

The Stupid Party Responds

Bush is apparently no longer their guy:

Several prominent House Republicans blasted the White House Thursday for removing North Korea from the list of state sponsors of terrorism, as some of President Bush’s staunchest supporters in the war on terror publicly lambasted him for engaging the country once famously branded as part of the 'axis of evil.'

Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, expressed her “profound disappointment” over the decision, while Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-Mich.), the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, also expressed his outrage.

“Lifting sanctions and removing North Korea from the list of state sponsors of terrorism flies in the face of history and rewards its brutal dictator for shallow gestures,” said Hoekstra, who has not shied away from criticizing the White House in recent years.

“Just as the Clinton administration was fooled by the Kim Jong-Il regime, time will soon tell if the Bush administration will fall for the same bait,” he added.

This makes me more convinced that Bush is actually doing the right thing here. Or maybe they're upset because they know that Obama can use this as an example the next time they go after him on Iran?

Going, Going, Gone

I guess this means the elves may have to take up swimming lessons.

The disappearance of the Arctic sea ice, making it possible to reach the Pole sailing in a boat through open water, would be one of the most dramatic – and worrying – examples of the impact of global warming on the planet. Scientists say the ice at 90 degrees north may well have melted away by the summer.

'From the viewpoint of science, the North Pole is just another point on the globe, but symbolically it is hugely important. There is supposed to be ice at the North Pole, not open water,' said Mark Serreze of the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre in Colorado.

If it happens, it raises the prospect of the Arctic nations being able to exploit the valuable oil and mineral deposits below these a bed which have until now been impossible to extract because of the thick sea ice above.

So there can be benefits to global warming. We may miss the ice, but our pocketbooks might not.

Bloggin' In The Years: 1933

People may be hurting in this economy, but farmers are getting a good payday:

John Wheatman raises an average of 1,000 bu. of wheat but gets paid only 30¢ per bu. on 625 bu., his ratio of domestic consumption. Before Sept. 1 he will collect $125. After next year's planting he will be eligible for $62.50 more.

Secretary Wallace was asked if farmers would join Domestic Allotment. Said he: 'A gratuity of 30¢ per bu. for wheat is a nice piece of change.''

Three days later Secretary Wallace announced his cotton plans: A week's campaign to sign up enough growers to take 10,000,000 acres out of production by leasing them to the Government for $6 to $20 per acre.

They may get their relief, but I just hope this policy of paying farmers not to grow doesn't come back to bite us in years to come.

In the New Germany, democracy is for suckers, according to Doctor Goebbels.

"It is a Democratic fallacy that people want to govern themselves." shrilled he. "In our Germanic Democracy, people do not themselves engage in politics. They leave that to men having their confidence—to a hierarchy of leaders.

"It is difficult to be 100% Nazi. Therefore to be a Nazi shall forever remain the proud privilege of the minority: the steel ribs of the State!"

To suggestions that the Government's acts exceeded last week even the broad powers conferred on Chancellor Hitler by President von Hindenburg's Decree for the Protection of the People and the State, Dr. Goebbels snorted: "A government conscious of its own responsibility must also know how to break the fetters of the law!"

And people call Roosevelt a "Dictator".

Rain O'er Me

Leave that rain alone!

Colorado state law mandates that any water falling from the air is not yours. In fact, according to their site, its already been “legally allocated” — so, you don’t actually have any rights when it comes to using precipitation that falls on your property. Here’s the exact wording:

Colorado Water Law requires that precipitation fall to the ground, run off and into the river of the watershed where it fell. Because rights to water are legally allocated in this state, an individual may not capture and use water to which he/she does not have a right. We must remember also that rain barrels don’t help much in a drought because a drought by its very nature supplies little in the way of snow or rain.

Additionally, any and all water that comes from tap may only be used once. “Denver water customers are not permitted to take their bath or laundry water (commonly referred to as gray water) and dump it on their outdoor plants or garden.” Even if that said water is ecologically-friendly?

Water droplets have rights. So sayeth the Green Police.

The Backyards Of Mars

Does this mean that Martians also like to BBQ?

The Phoenix lander's first taste test of soil near Mars' north pole reveals a briny environment similar to what can be found in backyards on Earth, scientists said today in Los Angeles.

The finding raises hope that the Martian arctic plains could have conditions favorable for primitive life. Phoenix landed a month ago to study the habitability of Mars' northern latitudes.

'There's nothing about it that would preclude life. In fact, it seems very friendly,' mission scientist Samuel Kounaves of Tufts University said of the soil. 'There's nothing about it that's toxic.'

Phoenix so far has not detected organic carbon considered an essential building block of life. Last week, the lander found evidence of ice below the soil. Scientists generally agree that liquid water, a stable energy source and organic, or carbon-containing, compounds are required for a habitable zone.

Mars must not have gotten the message from fundamentalists that only Earth can support life.

Not So Evil

Um, isn't this considered appeasement?

President Bush said Thursday he will lift key trade sanctions against North Korea and remove it from the U.S. terrorism blacklist, a remarkable turnaround in policy toward the communist regime he once branded as part of an 'axis of evil.'

The announcement came after North Korea handed over a long-awaited accounting of its nuclear work to Chinese officials on Thursday, fulfilling a key step in the denuclearization process.

Bush called the declaration a positive step along a long road to get the nation to give up its nuclear weapons. Yet, he remained wary of the regime, which has lied about its nuclear work before. And North Korea's declaration, received six months late, falls short of what the administration once sought, leaving it open to criticism from those who want the U.S. to take an even tougher stance against the regime.

'We will trust you only to the extent you fulfill your promises,' Bush said in the Rose Garden. 'I'm pleased with the progress. I'm under no illusions. This is the first step. This isn't the end of the process. It is the beginning of the process.'

I guess if a country already has nukes, diplomacy is OK.

The Warning Signs

Old blogs don't die, they just fail to get updated:

There are two general signs that a blog is heading toward extinction. The first is a declining frequency of posting, and the second is a proportional rise in the number of posts about the blog itself. These two don’t always go hand-in-hand; sometimes it’s just one or the other, sometimes you don’t get either warning sign. But when either of the two is spotted it’s reasonable to begin wondering how long that curious internet publication will continue to be updated.

(snip)

It always seems to be that journals — and blogs — begun with the urgent intensity of someone confident that the simple act of putting their thoughts on paper will clarify or improve them, you soon find that a personal conversation is hard. And whether it’s because you find yourself a poor conversationalist, a slow writer, or an incoherent blabberer the realization generally comes that the results are a little less than magical. The realization dawns that what you’re writing is not really in need of urgent preservation.

Well, I never thought of my words of wisdom as something that would be remembered for posterity (except for when I'm writing short stories). If I'm still blogging ten years from now, I guess I'll either be considered a dinosaur or lucky to be around. I blog, therefore I am.

The Second Amendment Lives

It's the sane approach to gun rights:

1. The Court does not resolve the issue of what level of scrutiny should be applied to purported violations of the Second Amendment, because it concludes that D.C.'s firearm restrictions, which effectively preclude keeping a gun in the home for self-defense, are so extreme that they would be unconstitutional under any level of scrutiny.

2. The Court explicitly says that laws prohibiting concealed carry, banning gun possession by 'felons and the mentally ill,' barring firearms from 'sensitive places' such as schools and government buildings, and regulating the sale of firearms are consistent with the Second Amendment. It also suggests that banning 'unusual and dangerous weapons,' as opposed to weapons in common use for lawful purposes, is permissible. Whether that means, say, bazookas or guns arbitrarily designated as 'assault weapons' is one of many details that will have to be worked out by the courts.

I guess this means I can't keep my rocket launcher. Durn libruls!

Devil Fish

I guess this one missed the Bible:

Scientists unearthed a skull of the most primitive four-legged creature in Earth's history, which should help them better understand the evolution of fish to advanced animals that walk on land.

The 365 million-year-old fossil skull, shoulders and part of the pelvis of the water-dweller, Ventastega curonica, were found in Latvia, researchers report in a study published in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature. Even though Ventastega is likely an evolutionary dead-end, the finding sheds new details on the evolutionary transition from fish to tetrapods. Tetrapods are animals with four limbs and include such descendants as amphibians, birds and mammals.

While an earlier discovery found a slightly older animal that was more fish than tetrapod, Ventastega is more tetrapod than fish. The fierce-looking creature probably swam through shallow brackish waters, measured about three or four feet long and ate other fish. It likely had stubby limbs with an unknown number of digits, scientists said.

But you can't trust them scientists. Every good Creationist knows that God spoke life into existence with the Word. He didn't say anything about four-legged fish, so this was obviously put there by Satan to confuse people, hallelujah!

Adults Need Not Apply

The demonization of grownups continues:

Anyone working for a voluntary organisation who comes into contact with children in any way has to take the paedophile test.

‘From Girl Guiders to football coaches, from Christmas-time Santas to parents helping out in schools, volunteers—once regarded as pillars of the community —have been transformed in the regulatory and public imagination into potential child abusers, barred from any contact with children until the database gives them the green light.’(p.x)

The effect of this treatment is to put some people off volunteering altogether. The Volunteer Survey 2007 found that 13 per cent of men would not volunteer because they were worried people would think they were child abusers (p.16) and 28 per cent of those who responded to an online survey carried out for Licensed to Hug said they knew someone who had been put off volunteering by the CRB process (p.18).

Everything is so "For the children!" these days that everyday adults are now the enemy. The children are in charge now-they just don't know it yet.

The Truth Is Out There

I wish I could say this guy was joking, but I don't think so.

I have four year old kids in my church that could tell you where life originated. If people would bother to accept the fact that everything in existence is created by an omnipotent God then, we would not need to waste money searching for an answer that even small children already know.

Mars is a desert planet and perhaps there is ice and maybe even water there. So what? Who cares? It's water! That doesn't mean a thing. Life originated on Earth when God spoke it into existence and there is no need in wasting billions of dollars of taxpayer money searching for an answer that is based upon faulty evolutionary ideas.

I'm sure any aliens out there would be gratified to learn that they were "Spoken" into existence.

Reaching Out

McCain makes another move that puts him at odds with many in his party (hat tip: Andrew Sullivan).

A source with close ties to the Log Cabin Board of Directors provided information about the meeting to GayPatriot earlier this week.

This source disclosed that the Log Cabin meeting was not reflected on Senator McCain’s published schedule in advance and the meeting…Log Cabin President Patrick Sammon confirmed the meeting with Senator McCain in email correspondence with GayPatriot earlier today…

Based on published news reports, the meeting with Senator McCain would be the first between any national-level gay Republicans and a Republican Presidental nominee since “The Texas 12″ met with then-Governor George W. Bush in 2000.

The fundies who still follow Bush seem to have forgotten that last part. Kudos to McCain for trying to bring some decency back into the GOP.

The Barr Effect

Barr's chances as a spoiler may be increasing:

Barack Obama's campaign manager said former Georgia Rep. Bob Barr, running for president on the Libertarian line, could play a crucial role in winning Obama the presidency.

He said Barr could play a particularly large role in two states: Alaska and Georgia.

Alaska is 'one of the states where we think Barr can get 6,7, 8 percent,' Plouffe said.

'Barr will get some votes [in Georgia,. If barr were to get two percent in most states, our belief is he’ll get four percent here, most of it coming out of McCain’s hide.'

Alaska-the first libertarian state?

Le Taxman Cometh

Just when I was starting to like the guy:

France will ban prime-time advertising on public television as of Jan. 1 and plans to tax Internet, phone and commercial broadcasting companies to replace the lost funding, President Nicolas Sarkozy said Wednesday.

Phone and Internet companies will pay a tax of 0.9 percent of sales to finance public television, Sarkozy said in a speech. Private television companies will pay a tax of 3 percent on advertising revenues to raise €80 million, or $121 million, for the state-owned France Télévisions, he said.

Société Télévision Française 1 and M6-Metropole Télévision, the largest commercial broadcasters in France, may benefit from increased ad spending as a result of the change. TF1 shares rose the most in almost six weeks, while M6 had the biggest gain in three weeks.

'By suppressing advertising, we want to give our public television the means of a greater freedom,' Sarkozy said in the speech at Élysée Palace. 'For viewers, things will change from Jan. 1, 2009.' All advertising will be phased out by Dec. 1, 2011, he said.

I guess he wants more freedom for everyone except those who actually make money.

What's Fair Is Fair

That durn librul Barack Obama comes out on the side of free speech.

Sen. Obama does not support reimposing the Fairness Doctrine on broadcasters,' press secretary Michael Ortiz said in an e-mail to B&C late Wednesday.

'He considers this debate to be a distraction from the conversation we should be having about opening up the airwaves and modern communications to as many diverse viewpoints as possible,' Ortiz added. 'That is why Sen. Obama supports media-ownership caps, network neutrality, public broadcasting, as well as increasing minority ownership of broadcasting and print outlets.'

The Fairness Doctrine issue flared up in recent days after reports that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) was talking about a Democratic push to reinstate it, although it was unclear at press time whether that was a new pledge or the restating of a long-held position.

Obviously this proves there's no difference at all between him and the rest of his party.

Who's Your Daddy?

Privacy hath its privelages.

Infertility therapy with donated sperm has collapsed to the lowest levels since records began, according to the first official figures, seen by The Times, since the Government banned anonymous donation in 2005.

The number of women treated with donated sperm fell by about 20 per cent, from 2,727 in 2005 to 2,107 in 2006, the first full year after the change. The number of donor insemination treatment cycles fell by 30 per cent over the same period.

Egg donation is also in serious decline: the number of treatments using “shared” eggs, offered by women in return for a discount on IVF, fell by 40 per cent between 2004 and 2006.

The figures demolish claims by ministers and the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) that sperm donation has improved since anonymity was ended. Last year Shirley Harrison, then the chairwom-an of the authority, said it was “a myth” that there had been problems.

There are never any problems in the Nanny State. It told me so.

In It To Lose It

Now this is an optimist:

SALT LAKE CITY - U.S. Rep. Chris Cannon, a conservative Republican who lost his primary to an opponent who accused him of not being conservative enough, said Wednesday that his defeat frees him to move on to pursue other opportunities.

Jason Chaffetz won Tuesday's primary with 60 percent of the vote. Fewer than 10 percent of the eligible voters cast ballots, according to state election officials.

'I'm actually pretty happy about last night's results,' Cannon told The Associated Press. 'I think I'll be able to do many of the things I would ordinarily do in Congress on the outside without having to suffer the sort of difficulties that come with that job.'

I hope the slew of other Republicans who are expected to lose this year are in such good spirits.

Conquest Of The Planet Of The Idiots

Oh, good grief.

MADRID (Reuters) - Spain's parliament voiced its support on Wednesday for the rights of great apes to life and freedom in what will apparently be the first time any national legislature has called for such rights for non-humans.

Parliament's environmental committee approved resolutions urging Spain to comply with the Great Apes Project, devised by scientists and philosophers who say our closest genetic relatives deserve rights hitherto limited to humans.

'This is a historic day in the struggle for animal rights and in defense of our evolutionary comrades, which will doubtless go down in the history of humanity,' said Pedro Pozas, Spanish director of the Great Apes Project.

We'll see how he feels after he becomes a target during the next gorilla hunt...

Rage Against The Wage

The Best Magazine in the World notes the flip side of those notorious Third World sweatshops:

...a few points about sweatshops: As economist Benjamin Powell notes here, few of us lazy Americans would last a day in a Third World textile factory. But that's mostly because we have other options; most of us have far better employment alternatives. This, obviously, is not the case in a place like Vietnam, where a Nike factory worker can earn three times the minimum wage of a worker employed by a state-owned company. In Saigon, the dreaded 'sweatshop' position has long been a prized job in a slowly liberalizing economy.

Diehard protectionists and well-meaning lefties alike should take note of what would happen to these countries' economies-and how that would affect our interests-were we to cut off contact. It should also be noted that as is the case with most of their complaints, liberals offer no real solutions to the sweatshop problem. And how many workers would turn down the chance to make three times what their fellow countrymen make just to make foreign liberals feel better about themselves?

The War On Weight

Talk about overusing a phrase:

According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, obesity may account for 300,000 premature deaths a year, almost as many as deaths from cigarette smoking. People who are obese have a 50 to 100 percent increased risk of premature death from all causes compared to those who are not overweight, including heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure, gallbladder disease, sleep apnea, osteoarthritis and some cancers.

Even though today's numbers offer some hope, it's much too early to assume that the problem has been solved—this may still be the first generation in which kids have shorter lifespans than their parents. According to former U.S. surgeon general Richard Carmona, 'As we look to the future and where childhood obesity will be in 20 years … it is every bit as threatening to us as is the terrorist threat we face today. It is the terrorist threat from within.'

Ah, yes, the diabetic terrorists who are prone to heart attacks. Yep, that's a real threat, right there.

Smoked Out

Amsterdam's famous coffee shop culture runs afoul of the smoking police.

As in the rest of Europe the purpose of the ban is to protect the health of staff, who at present are obliged to inhale passively other people's smoke. But Sandy Lambrecht, the manager of the Bulldog coffee shop on the Leidseplein in the heart of Amsterdam, said: 'The new rules are absurd. You come to a coffee shop to smoke, after all – it's ridiculous that we have to comply. The new rules are meant to protect employees like me, but the point is that we chose to work here.'

Paul Wilhelm, the owner of De Tweede Kamer, one of Amsterdam's most famous coffee shops, founded in 1985, argued: 'If the boys are old enough to be sent to Afghanistan, then you can't tell me that people want to protect them from smoke in the workplace. They're old enough to decide on their own. They can vote, they can go to war – but now they won't even be allowed to make this decision?'

Welcome to the War On Tobacco.

I Dub Thee Sir Asshat

Well, this will get his attention:

On Wednesday, officials from Swaziland, Angola and Tanzania — the so-called troika empowered to speak for the Southern African Development Community, a regional bloc of 14 nations — called on Zimbabwe to put off the voting because the current crisis would undermine its legitimacy.

Tacking a different tack, Queen Elizabeth II stripped Robert Mugabe, the country’s president for nearly 30 years, of his honorary knighthood as a “mark of revulsion” at the human rights abuses and “abject disregard” for democracy over which he is presiding, the British Foreign Office said Wednesday.

This is an Ex-Knight...

Bloggin' In The Years: 1987

Above and beyond, apparently:

Fawn Hall's right hand trembled when she was sworn in as the 18th and final witness in the first phase of the congressional hearings on the Iran- contra scandal. But when she coolly related an extraordinary tale of typing phony official documents, shredding classified papers and hiding others in her clothes to sneak them past White House guards, her face hardened. Whenever her motives or those of her boss, Lieut. Colonel Oliver North, were challenged, she flashed both anger and fear. 'Sometimes you have to go above the written law,' she blurted out. Then, apparently hearing the gasps in the audience, she retreated. 'Maybe that's not correct; it's not a fair thing to say.'

But she looks cute when she does it.

Maggie Thatcher explains the basics:

Q. How do you interpret the election?

A. It means that the policies we were pursuing, which we put openly and frankly before the people, were thought to be right for Britain. They were policies which were a partnership between government and people -- namely, we do the things which only governments can do, running the finances in a sound way, keeping inflation down, cutting controls and giving tax incentives. And we got the response in an increasing enterprise and competitiveness from the British people. And that produced a higher standard of living.

Capitalism-what a concept.

Junk science takes a back seat to the Age of Reason.

Louisiana tried to defend its law with arguments about academic freedom, the right to teach and learn without censorship by orthodox scientists. It's true that evolution is only a theory and that some scientists, contrary to scientific method, occasionally treat it as dogma. But to promote a particular religious belief in the schools, the zealous Louisiana lawmakers made clear that they were not in favor of open, wide-ranging discussion. Academic freedom was only a fig leaf.

The legislators, for example, didn't declare science teaching open to all theories. Nor were they content with requiring teachers to explain the secular effect of clashes between religion and science. Instead they demanded special study guides and safeguards for their preferred beliefs. Their law had much more to do with censorship than academic freedom.

A 7-to-2 majority of the Court understood as much. Only Justice Antonin Scalia and Chief Justice William Rehnquist accepted Louisiana's argument. The result is reassuring for all who want better science teaching and believe government has no business promoting religion in school.

Indeed it is.

The Write Stuff?

Literary genius apparently takes time.

When it comes to the novel, however, Americans are still willing to take it slow, or at least reward the writers who do. Indeed, in recent years a highly visible group of 'Great American Novels' have emerged from 10, 12, and even over 20-year gestation periods.

Edward P Jones, Junot Diaz and Jeffrey Eugenides all took 11 years to write their Pulitzer prize-winning novels -a blink, really, when compared to Shirley Hazzard and Marilynne Robinson's 23-year gaps preceding The Great Fire and Gilead respectively.

In a country that invented the internet, let alone the interstate, where computers are replaced every two years and iPhones tossed out after mere months, this is beyond pokey. It's positively counter-cultural.

I'd call it lazy and snobbish. Bear in mind that a lot of writers are still churning out genre novels at a fast clip. But then, maybe they actually don't mind making money from their work.

Smaller Is Better

To paraphrase Mark Twain, the death of indie cinema may be greatly exagerrated.

The national economy has slipped into what looks like a protracted recession, the supply pipeline is clogged with crap, the future of film distribution is literally up in the air and the audience is distracted, distraught and fragmented. Newspapers, broadcast TV, the music industry and other media have suffered precipitous downturns. What a great moment for dark and quirky motion pictures! Seen in that light, a market crash was an enormous duh, and perhaps a necessary correction, as they say in business school. Maybe all that stock-market money had to go down the toilet to get the industry focused on making fewer and better films, a solution that would make many of these problems go away.

The dinosaur method of making movies is in pretty much the same situation as the Old Media is. The problem for the New Media era of moviemaking may be one of quantity over quality, however:

There will still be a professional film industry that produces and distributes a relatively small number of movies that cost hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars, whether they reach you in theaters, through a cable box, on your computer or iPod or through some other pipeline not yet devised. There will also be a purely digital universe of films that cost almost nothing to make and almost nothing to watch -- sort of a purified, film-school version of YouTube, minus any dreams of media stardom or celebrity coke parties.

This "Digital creative divide" may cheapen the already tarnished image of filmmaking-or it may force the studios to turn out better, streamlined product of their own in order to compete and, perhaps more importantly, show the YouTube crowd how it's supposed to be done.

The O.C.

Real conservative media (read: not Fox News or talk radio) gets it:

Why two people who want to be married should be required to get a license from the state is something of a mystery. Marriage existed long before the California or U.S. governments came into being and will continue long after they have been consigned to history. Whether a marriage is valid should be up to the people involved and the churches, synagogues, mosques or other religious institutions that choose to perform them or not.

As a practical matter, however, the government has so entwined itself into our daily lives that state recognition is important. Filing taxes as a married couple or as individuals makes a difference, as does the ability to own real estate, make end-of-life decisions or adopt children. Considering all this and the importance of equality before the law, the high court's decision was justified.

Well, apparently some state recognition should still be more equal than others in the eyes of some "Conservatives."

Hurra, Hurra

Call it the Voice Of Mediocrity:

Since its inception, al-Hurra has been plagued by mediocre programming, congressional interference and a succession of executives who either had little experience in television or could not speak Arabic, according to interviews with former staffers, other Arab journalists and viewers in the Middle East.

It has also been embarrassed by journalistic blunders. One news anchor greeted the station's predominantly Muslim audience on Easter by declaring, 'Jesus is risen today!' After al-Hurra covered a December 2006 Holocaust-denial conference in Iran and aired, unedited, an hour-long speech by the leader of Hezbollah, Congress convened hearings and threatened to cut the station's budget.

'Many people just didn't know how to do their job,' said Yasser Thabet, a former senior editor at al-Hurra. 'If some problem happened on the air, people would just joke with each other, saying, 'Well, nobody watches us anyway.' It was very self-defeating."

Not good news...You'd think they were the Republican party or something.

When Big Government Was Bad

A look back at a time when conservatives actually cared about too much Presidential power:

The right-wing intellectuals who coalesced around William F. Buckley’s National Review associated powerful presidents with activist liberalism: the New Deal, the New Frontier, the Great Society. Therre was a time when you could hear conservative heroes like Barry Goldwater say the sort of things that would get Sean Hannity to call for treason trials today. Goldwater wrote in 1964 that:

Some of the current worship of powerful executives may come from those who admire strength and accomplishment of any sort. Others hail the display of Presidential strength … simply because they approve of the result reached by the use of power. This is nothing less than the totalitarian philosophy that the end justifies the means…. If ever there was a philosophy of government totally at war with that of the Founding Fathers, it is this one.

But that was before neocons decided it was OK when their side did it.

Too Shy

What if shyness actually becomes cool?

Some people take the anti-shyness drug, but the previous extroverts, facing new competition for sex and friends, become even more extroverted, thus feeling more strain. Many of them start taking the drug to stay ahead. The previously shy exhibit more 'juice,' so to speak, but without much net result in terms of an improved life since they are still coming in second, so to speak. And those who don't take the anti-shyness drug are even worse off than before, given the new and higher standard for extroversion.

Some of the remaining shy, however, might in fact feel relieved. If the new standard of extroversion rises so high that they can't possibly meet it, they might, to some extent, withdraw from social competition. The truly shy might even form social clubs and band together in the interests of promoting shyness. If they can signal that they do not take the drug, their shyness might become more socially acceptable than before.

There's something to be said for being an introvert at times.

Their Day In Kangaroo Court

Al Gore meets Kafka.

James Hansen, one of the world's leading climate scientists, will today call for the chief executives of large fossil fuel companies to be put on trial for high crimes against humanity and nature, accusing them of actively spreading doubt about global warming in the same way that tobacco companies blurred the links between smoking and cancer.

Hansen will use the symbolically charged 20th anniversary of his groundbreaking speech (pdf) to the US Congress - in which he was among the first to sound the alarm over the reality of global warming - to argue that radical steps need to be taken immediately if the 'perfect storm' of irreversible climate change is not to become inevitable.

Speaking before Congress again, he will accuse the chief executive officers of companies such as ExxonMobil and Peabody Energy of being fully aware of the disinformation about climate change they are spreading.

In an interview with the Guardian he said: 'When you are in that kind of position, as the CEO of one the primary players who have been putting out misinformation even via organisations that affect what gets into school textbooks, then I think that's a crime."

By that standard, so is global warming alarmism. But that's just me.

Black Out

What is it with McCain's people, anyway?

John McCain distanced himself Monday from a top adviser who said another terrorist attack on U.S. soil this election year would benefit the Republican presidential candidate. Barack Obama's campaign called the comment a 'complete disgrace.'

Charlie Black, an adviser already in the spotlight for his past lobbying work, is quoted in the upcoming July 7 edition of Fortune magazine as saying such an attack 'certainly would be a big advantage to him.' Black said Monday he regretted the comment.

Black is also quoted as saying the 'unfortunate event' of the assassination of former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto earlier this year 'helped us.'

Questioned about Black's comments during a news conference, McCain said, 'I cannot imagine why he would say it; it's not true. I've worked tirelessly since 9/11 to prevent anther attack on the United States of America. My record is very clear.'

But apparently the word to his team members to refrain from making dumb comments wasn't.

Fill In The Blanks

The good part is, it's interchangeable with either candidate.

The people have spoken, choosing to [blank] the course of American [blank]. We see from the [blank] size of the electoral margin that the people have spoken [blank]ively. It is up to you, [blank] [blank], to navigate these [blank] but [blank] waters with [blank]fullness. Remember, the voters, though often [blank]istic and sometimes [blank]ious, are ever un-[blank] in their [blank]ism.

A President's [blank] term in office is the measure of his mettle. Only then does a chief executive have the [blank] to [blank] without undue partisan [blank]. Therefore this is the time to re-[blank] our commitment in Iraq, re-[blank] our international alliances, and re-[blank] the threat of [blank], [blank], [blank], [blank], [blank], and [blank].

On the domestic front you've vowed to expand [blank], improve [blank], strengthen [blank], and broaden America's access to [blank]. We [blank] that these [blank] objectives [blank] be [blank]ed without sacrificing [blank]. It will be your job to balance [blank] and [blank], giving full weight to [blank], while never losing sight of [blank]. There is no other way to provide America with the [blank] it so [blank]ly requires.

Although we [blank]ed your candidacy, we believe that, even as your [blank]s, we have the duty to [blank] you when necessary. This is the American [blank]. Likewise it is the American [blank] to seek a leader who will [blank] when the storm of [blank] requires a [blank] hand on the [blank]. As you so [blank]ly said in your victory speech, 'America is [blank].' We could not agree more.

I would add that I agree with every blank, and hope that president blank will blank for America's blank.

Free Market Fearmongering

It's one of the issues where Obama is still more wrong than right.

In the Democratic primary campaign, both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama treated free trade as a horseman of the Apocalypse, depicting a world in which American parents and children compete for minimum-wage jobs while corporations heartlessly shift the better jobs overseas.

Mr Obama claims, for instance, that “entire cities...have been devastated” by Nafta, the North American Free Trade Agreement signed in 1993, which he blames for destroying a million American jobs, when in fact total employment has risen by 27 million since 1993, when the trade deficit with Mexico, his favourite scapegoat, accounts for a hardly significant 1.7 per cent of the US economy - and when, overall, job losses attributable to trade rather than to higher productivity amount to only about 2 to 3 per cent of American layoffs.

Should he win, it is possible that Mr Obama will stop talking nonsense like this, for the simple reason that the cheaper dollar has helped to make exports the brightest part of the US economy, accounting for 40 per cent of growth. Optimists point out that he has so far kept quiet on China.

Perhaps he has been told that price inflation is six points lower for blue-collar Americans than for wealthier ones, because poorer people buy more Chinese goods. However, nothing could be less certain than his conversion to free trade, because the Democrats are likely to increase their majority in Congress, and protectionism is raging in Democrat ranks - witness the 2008 Farm Bill, a $290 billion (£146 billion) monument to protectionism.

The world economy overall has actually grown with free trade. New outlets for goods=new opportunities for growth in the long run. Stubborn outbursts of protectionism might be good for nationalism, but true economic growth comes from the ability to adapt, not isolate. John McCain at least understands this.

All's Fairness In Love And Ratings Wars

Real free speech continues to annoy liberals.

First, some history. The Reagan administration repealed a federal regulation – quaintly called the Fairness Doctrine - requiring broadcasters to present both sides of a controversial issue, which was enforced by the Federal Communications Commission from 1949 to 1987. After the Fairness Doctrine was dropped, the free market was allowed to do its thing. And conservative talk radio and television became a booming industry.

Conservative radio hosts such as Rush Limbaugh - and the radio stations that employ them - succeeded because there was an enormous market out there hungry to hear conservative voices. No one shut down progressive voices on the airwaves. People just stopped listening – or at least enough people stopped listening to make progressive shows profitable.

With the national mood apparently changing, liberals now have the chance to make their voices heard over the radio waves. Whether they succeed should be decided by the radio networks' listeners-not by those doing the talking.

The Little House That Could

Ah, sweet shadenfreude.

Since Kelo, two state supreme courts have explicitly rejected the decision, while another three have questioned the validity of the decision under their respective state constitutions. As cases come before them, more state courts are likely to do the same.

Moreover, there has been massive public awareness brought to the issue of eminent domain abuse. Although there was growing concern about the issue and some awareness before Kelo, after the decision, just about every reasonably well-informed person in the country now knows about the issue—and a vast majority of them oppose eminent domain for private development.

This significant public opposition to eminent domain abuse has led to a complete change in the Zeitgeist on the issue. While public officials, planners, and developers in the past could keep the condemnations for private gain under the public's radar and thus usually get away with the seizure of homes and small businesses, that is no longer the case. Property law expert Dwight Merriam notes: "The reaction to Kelo has chilled the will of government to use eminent domain for private economic development."

Also, in a mere three-year period, 42 states have changed their eminent domain laws either through citizen initiative or legislation. About half of these provide strong protection against the abuse of eminent domain and virtually all of them represent an improvement over the truly terrible eminent domain laws that were on the books before Kelo.

And what of the huge project that started this whole mess?

New London's Fort Trumbull project has so far been an unmitigated disaster. Despite the infusion of close to $80 million in taxpayer funds and three years elapsing since the Kelo decision, there has been no new construction in the area whatsoever. The preferred developer for part of the site, Corcoran Jennison, just missed its latest deadline for securing financing for building something—anything—on the site of the old neighborhood. The developer was so desperate for funding that it applied to the federal Housing and Urban Development agency to obtain taxpayer-subsidized loans to build luxury apartments in the area. Even the former editor of the local newspaper, who was a strong supporter of the project from its inception, admitted this month, "The city is unlikely to get much new tax revenue anytime soon in Fort Trumbull and a hotel [the supposed centerpiece of the project] is at least five years away, if at all."

Now that's what I call payback.

The Long March

The yellow school bus might become a thing of the past in D.C.

Here's how rising fuel prices affect an organization with a fleet of 1,273 school buses: The Montgomery County school board today will consider giving Superintendent Jerry D. Weast emergency powers to make students walk farther to school, if need be, in the coming academic year.

The school system's diesel costs have more than doubled in four years, from $3.6 million in fiscal 2005 to a projected $7.9 million for fiscal 2009, which begins next month. It's a hardship shared by the Fairfax County school system, with more than 1,500 buses; the Prince George's County system, with 1,285 buses; and other area systems that transport tens of thousands of students daily and are paying more for fuel than the average parent at an Exxon pump on Rockville Pike.

'The last purchase we made was $4.40 a gallon,' said John Matthews, Montgomery schools transportation director. A one-penny rise in price costs the school system $33,000 a year.
School officials generally think of fuel as a fixed cost. But it's really not, Weast reminded board members June 10 in Rockville. Should prices continue to rise, the school system could save money by raising maximum walking distances for students, because more walkers means fewer buses. Currently, elementary school students walk up to a mile, middle school students 1.5 miles and high school students two miles.

'You may have to come to a very delicate decision that you'll have to make sometime during the next year if the costs continue to go up,' Weast said during a discussion of transportation policy. 'A million [dollar] cost in fuel is about 16 1/2 teaching slots.'

Well, at least with climate change the kids won't have to tell their own kids how they had to walk five miles in the snow during the winter.

Moon Heat

It must be those Neptunians and their carbon footprints:

Neptune has 13 known moons, six of which were discovered by Voyager 2. The largest, Triton, orbits Neptune in a direction opposite to the direction of the planet's rotation. Triton is the coldest body yet visited in our solar system—temperatures on its surface are about -391 degrees Fahrenheit (-235 degrees Celsius). Despite this deep freeze, Voyager 2 discovered geysers spewing icy material upward more than five miles (eight kilometers). Triton's thin atmosphere, also discovered by Voyager, has been seen from Earth several times since, and is growing warmer—although scientists do not yet know why.

I wonder if they're also blaming speculators and greedy oil companies for their gas prices.

We Already Knew That

Why is Obama having the success that was denied to guys like Dukakis and Kerry? Perhaps because people know he's a liberal-and don't care.

The way that the Republicans achieved that big swing in 1988, assisted by a couple of significant gaffes from the Dukakis campaign, was to portray Dukakis as too liberal for the American mainstream. The same basic strategic template was employed against John Kerry in 2004. However, this strategy is unlikely to work in 2008. How come? Barack Obama is already perceived as being very liberal.

(snip)

It may be that the primary fault line in this election is not liberal versus conservative, but change versus experience. Voters might think that Barack Obama is slightly further from them ideologically than is John McCain -- but they might also think that the country has been governed for eight years by a conservative, and that this governance has failed.

It may also be that voters are more conservative in theory than in practice. According to Rasmussen, 36 percent of voters describe themselves as conservative as opposed to 25 percent who say that they are liberal. This figure is not all that different from 2004, when 34 percent of voters said they were conservative and 21 percent liberal in exit polling. But if you look at the specific issues that loom largest in this campaign, the liberal position on things like pulling out from Iraq, implementing some kind of national health care policy, and increasing environmental regulation each poll at roughly 70/30 majorities.

There is also a school of thought that voters in Presidential elections tend to base their decisions less on the ideological attributes of a candidate and more on the personal ones. Obama's favorability rating presently stands at a +25. By contrast, John Kerry rarely did much better than even on this metric, depending on the specific wording of the question.

Either way, this is a significant problem for the Republicans. If their strategy is to say "Hey! Hey! Barack Obama is a liberal!", the American public's reaction is likely to be "Well, no shit! We're voting for him anyway."

Andrew Sullivan suggests it's because Team Bush has made liberalism cool. I don't think it's that as much as it is that they have made Republicans (of their variety, anyway) so very uncoool.

Another Splendid Little War?

If true, then this administration really hasn't learned anything.

This morning on Fox News, former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton continued his drumbeat for war against Iran. Adopting Bill Kristol’s argument, Bolton suggested that an attack on Iran depends on who Americans elect as the next President:

I think if they [Israel] are to do anything, the most likely period is after our elections and before the inauguration of the next President. I don’t think they will do anything before our election because they don’t want to affect it. And they’d have to make a judgment whether to go during the remainder of President Bush’s term in office or wait for his successor.

Bolton gamed out the fallout from an attack on Iran. He claimed that Iran’s options to retaliate after being attacked are actually “less broad than people think.” He suggested that Iran would not want to escalate a conflict because 1) it still needs to export oil

2) it would worry about “an even greater response” from Israel, 3) and it would worry about the U.S.’s response.

Bolton then concluded that Arab states would be excited if the U.S. or Israel attacked Iran:

I don’t think you’d hear the Arab states say this publicly, but they would be delighted if the United States or Israel destroyed the Iranian nuclear weapons capability."

Maybe...unless the fears of a destabilized Middle East come true, and Iran still finds a way to retaliate against the American troops still in Iraq. If certain folks on the right think this could help John McCain win they need to check their calenders. This isn't the nineteenth century and simply starting another war won't win somebody the White House in a climate this bad for the Republicans. Get a clue, John, or find another line of work.

Do What Now?

Um...ah...what?

Levitra, an erectile dysfunction (ED) drug made by Bayer AG is undergoing its third labeling change since 2005. This time, the precautions section of the Levitra label will be changed to note its possible association with transient global amnesia, or TGA.

TGA is a sudden, temporary episode of memory loss that can’t be attributed to a more common neurological condition, such as epilepsy, transient ischemic attack, stroke or head injury. During an episode of transient global amnesia, recall of recent events simply vanishes, so a victim is unable to remember where they are or how they got there. They may also draw a blank when asked to remember things that happened a day, a month or even a year ago.

Victims of TGA do remember who they are, and they will recognize family members and others they have known for a long time. When an episode of TGA is over, a victim will remember nothing that happened while their memory was impaired, and might not recall the hours beforehand.

According to the FDA, the Levitra label got the transient global amnesia note “because of a limited number of post-marketing reports of men who experienced TGA” around the time they took Levitra. The FDA is stressing that no direct link has been found between TGA and Levitra. The agency has also said that the reported instances of TGA in men taking Levitra may have been spurred by something else, even by sex.

I think some guys would rather claim that they were probed by aliens than admit something like this...

We're Here To Pump You Up

Our "Friends" to the rescue-sort of.

JIDDAH, Saudi Arabia — Facing strong U.S. pressure and global dismay over oil prices, Saudi Arabia said Sunday it will produce more crude this year if the market needs it. But the vague pledge fell far short of U.S. hopes for a specific increase and may do little to lower prices immediately.

For now, the current 'oil shock' leaves Western countries with little choice but to move toward nuclear power and change their energy-consumption habits, Britain's prime minister warned at a rare meeting of oil-producing and consuming nations.

Saudi Arabia — the world's top crude exporter — called the gathering Sunday to send a message that it, too, is concerned by high oil prices inflicting economic pain worldwide.

Instead, the meeting highlighted the sharp disagreement between producers like Saudi Arabia and consuming countries like Britain and the United States over the core factors driving steep price hikes. Oil closed near $135 a barrel on Friday — almost double the price a year ago.

Well, hopefully the Chevy Volt and oil from bugs will help put these guys out of business sooner rather than later.

Death By Scandal

Oh, this has bad omen written all over it:

The man picked to replace disgraced New York Rep. Vito Fossella died in his sleep Sunday, The Staten Island Advance reported.

Frank Powers Sr., 67, a retired Wall Street executive unanimously endorsed by the local GOP to run in November in Fossella's place, was discovered by his wife in his bed.

A millionaire philanthropist, he had planned to tap into $500,000 of his own fortune to run for the seat that he had helped Fossella win. Fossella announced he would step down after a drunken driving arrest led to the discovery that he had a mistress in Washington, D.C., and a child out of wedlock.

I guess he really didn't want the job...

There Is No Censorship In Heaven

For many of us who grew up in the Seventies and Eighties, George Carlin was part of the Holy Trinity of comedy that included Robin Williams and Richard Pryor. R.I.P., Rufus.

Fear Of A Happy Planet

Doomsaying is a cottage industry these days. So when are we finally going to deprive the professional doomsayers of their livelihood?

The memeplexes which have grown out of our fear of the future -- pessimism, cynicism, fatalism, misanthropy -- seem to be gaining in influence. I wrote recently about longstanding debate between Paul Ehrlich, who is lauded for his consistently wrong predictions of catastrophe, and Julian Simon, who was essentially ignored in the face of his fact-based assessments of human progress and correct predictions of more of the same. Whether we're talking about Paul Ehrlich or Bill Joy or Al Gore, a doomsayer is a person with a serious point of view, someone who is to be respected. And whether we're talking about Julian Simon, Robin Hanson, or Ray Kurzweil, a doomslayer is a crackpot who needs to be taken down a peg.

It's true that happy thoughts don't sell as well as apocalyptic ones. But that's because we've often been all too willing to feel bad about the future instead of look forward to it. Maybe it's time we gave optimism a shot.

Among The Clintonites

Should he really have expected anything different?

Obama agreed that a lot of work needs to be done to heal the Democratic Party, and that he hoped the Clinton supporters in the room would help as much as possible.

According to Rep. Yvette Clarke, D-N.Y., Obama then said, 'However, I need to make a decision in the next few months as to how I manage that since I'm running against John McCain, which takes a lot of time. If women take a moment to realize that on every issue important to women, John McCain is not in their corner, that would help them get over it.'

Rep. Diane Watson, D-Calif., a longtime Clinton supporter, did not like those last three words -- 'Get over it.' She found them dismissive, off-putting.

'Don't use that terminology,' Watson told Obama.

Clarke did not react the same way.

'I, personally, as a Hillary supporter, did not take that as something distasteful,' Clarke said. 'Nothing like that.'

But, Clarke said, Watson 'latched on to those three words.'

Can Obama tell these people to take a flying leap? Yes he can!

Smears R Us

Hizzonor takes on the smear merchants on Obama's behalf.

BOCA RATON, Fla. — Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, injecting himself directly into the presidential campaign, forcefully denounced on Friday what he called a “whisper campaign” linking Senator Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, to Islam.

Leave a Comment on City Room Speaking before a crucial constituency in the coming election, Jewish voters, in the pivotal state of Florida, Mr. Bloomberg said that rumors of Mr. Obama secretly being a Muslim represent “wedge politics at its worst, and we have to reject it — loudly, clearly and unequivocally.”

“Let’s call those rumors what they are: lies,” said Mr. Bloomberg, who has been mentioned as a potential running mate for both Mr. Obama and Senator John McCain, the likely Republican nominee.

Residents of South Florida, home to the second-largest population of Jews in the United States after New York City, have received e-mail messages claiming that Mr. Obama sympathizes with radical Islam and does not support Israel. Mr. Obama, a Christian, has repeatedly rejected both claims.

But that won't stop the diehard Clintonites and more rabid Obama haters from spreading them. It will be a good day for America when we can leave this sort of garbage behind us.

Bill Bids Farewell

Bill Gates is stepping down.

A Harvard University dropout who ushered in the home computer age and made billions of dollars along the way will have his last official day of work at Microsoft on June 27.

Three people will essentially fill the void left behind when Bill Gates retires from the company he and friend Paul Allen co-founded in 1975.

Since Gate's began his transition from leading Microsoft to heading his personally-bankrolled charity, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, his job as chief software architect has been handled by Ray Ozzie.

Craig Mundie inherited Gate's chief research and strategy officer duties, while former Harvard classmate Steve Ballmer became chief executive officer at the Seattle-based software colossus.

Gates left Harvard after two years to found the firm that became global powerhouse Microsoft. He later received honorary degrees from Harvard and other universities.

After retiring, Gates will remain chairman of the Microsoft board of directors and its largest shareholder.

'I don't think anything is going to drastically change the day he leaves,' said Matt Rosoff of the private analyst firm Directions On Microsoft.

'If he thinks something is important and tells Steve Ballmer, Ballmer will listen to him.'

I understand Bill is getting a gold watch that will require security updates every other month.

Bloggin' In The Years: 2000

Bush and Gore spar over big oil.

George W. Bush voiced support for an investigation of soaring gasoline prices, but he put most of the blame on the Clinton administration's failure to convince foreign crude producers to ''open the spigots.'

'I do think it's fair to have the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) investigate,' Bush told reporters Wednesday, adding that the results would be 'healthy' for the debate about prices that have climbed above $2 per gallon in Chicago and Milwaukee.

His Democratic rival for the presidency, Al Gore, countered that Bush has come late to the issue.

''Big oil may have gotten too big. The competitive pressures may not be what they used to be,'' Gore said aboard Air Force Two between campaign stops. The vice president quickly added he was not calling for a break up of any oil companies.

So Al blames those nasty profiteers. Before he starts throwing stones, however, Al might want to check the walls of his glass house first:

On April 28 about 100 demonstrators turned up at Occidental's annual meeting in Santa Monica and called on the company to halt the project. Activists have also picketed the offices of Fidelity Investments, which owns about 8 percent of Occidental's shares, and criticized Vice President Al Gore, whose family owns at least a quarter of a million dollars' worth of Occidental stock.

But government backing for Occidental's Colombia proposal runs far deeper than the Gore family's stock portfolio. The Nation has learned, from a government source and the internal memos of an Occidental lobbyist, that the Clinton Administration has been quietly helping the company--a generous donor to the Democrats in recent years--to win support in Colombia for its drilling plans. While Gore has strong ties to Occidental, the Administration's point man on the issue is Energy Secretary Bill Richardson, who last year traveled to Cartagena and met with government officials on the company's behalf. Richardson has also hired a former Occidental lobbyist to work in a key international-policy position at the Energy Department.

Gee, Al, hypocritical much?

It seems that Mr. Green is literally rolling in, well, green:

For the first time, Nader has released a financial disclosure statement. It shows that the longtime critic of corporate power is worth at least $3.8 million, thanks to investments in technology stocks. He makes $200,000- $300,000 from speeches but plugs most of his income into his consumer organizations and lives on about $25,000 a year. Nader says he will not release his income tax statements because of his long-standing support for privacy rights.

Well, I guess for a presidential candidate he's "Frugal":

Nader, a bachelor, lives in a rented studio apartment in Washington and owns a black-and-white television set. He does not own a car or real estate.

Neither will anybody else if the Greens ever get their way.

It's Miller time!

In an attempt to reverse sliding ratings, ABC Sports has brought Dennis Miller aboard as part of a drastic reworking of its Monday Night Football broadcast team.

Yes, THAT Dennis Miller -- once a regular on Saturday Night Live and host of his own HBO comedy show. The Dennis Miller known for his sarcastic rantings and obscure references.

Hall of Fame quarterback Dan Fouts, a reserved analyst with experience calling NFL and college football, will also join play-by-play announcer Al Michaels the lone holdover from last season in the broadcast booth.

Miller's "role will not be to do Xs-and-Os, nor will it be to do stand-up comedy," Don Ohlmeyer, the show's producer, said Thursday. "Our goal was to try and put together a team that has distinctive voices, distinctive personalities, distinctive points of view."

Well, at the very least Miller will be able to tell a football joke that only one out of every ten Monday Night Football viewers will get.

High Voltage

Can the Volt be the little car that could? GM sure hopes so:

In conversations with everyone from staff engineers to Rick Wagoner, the chairman and CEO, I heard references to the Apollo program. “John Kennedy didn’t say, ‘Let’s go to the moon and, you know, we’ll get there as soon as we can,’” Wagoner said in a recent interview in his office, atop a high-rise in Detroit. “I asked our experts, ‘Guys, do we have a reasonable chance of making it or not?’ Yes. ‘Well, then, let’s go for what we want rather than go for what we know we can do.’” With the Volt, GM—battered, beleaguered, struggling for profitability—hopes to re-engineer not just the car but the way the public thinks about cars, the way the public thinks about GM, and the way GM thinks about itself.

GM's problem is that they failed to take advantage of the resources they had to be a profitable counterweight to Nissan. Now that they're finally waking up, they've got a lot of catching up to do. Maybe they'll get it right this time.

Star Chamber Wars

Why it was the right call, in a nutshell:

Boumediene v. Bush is not a license to allow hardened terrorists to go free. It is a rejection of the alarmist view that our fragile geopolitical position requires abandoning our commitment to preventing Star Chamber proceedings that result in arbitrary incarceration.

Those who wailed about the decision might well ask themselves what they are really scared of-looking weak, or looking too insecure?

Profit Is Not Our Business

The NASA dinosaur lumbers along.

NASA, at least Mike Griffin’s NASA, has no intention or desire to really build an interstate highway system for space. Instead, NASA, in keeping with its tradition for the past half century, has opted to build a transportation system for NASA and its astronauts, and of little or no use to anyone or anything else. And maybe it’s not NASA’s job to build an interplanetary IHS.

But it ought to be NASA’s job to encourage the development of such an infrastructure, which would enable not only many private activities but dramatically reduce NASA’s own costs for space exploration and development. There are many ways in which it could be doing so. For example, it could incorporate orbital gas stations into its lunar plans and put out bids for delivery of propellant. It could be focusing on the development of the technologies necessary to build it, reducing the technical risk to the point that private funds can be raised for construction. It could be purchasing a lot more crew and cargo transport from the private sector, demanding reduced cost, thus nurturing a growing private space transportation industry with multiple providers so we aren’t dependent on a single means of getting into space.

NASA is not doing these things because it thinks like a government agency, not a business. And we've had a lot of missed opportunities because of it.

Dishonest Graft

Shades of the Sopranos.

Manhattan prosecutors are investigating whether the leading concrete testing company in the New York area, which has been hired to measure and analyze the strength of the concrete poured at some of the biggest construction projects in the city, failed to do some tests and falsified others, officials involved in the inquiry said on Friday.

The new Yankee Stadium is among the projects in which the work of Testwell Laboratories is in question.

Testwell Laboratories was responsible for testing of concrete used at the Freedom Tower, now under construction at ground zero. The investigation has uncovered problems with tests the company conducted on concrete poured over the last two years at the new Yankee Stadium in the Bronx and the foundation of the Freedom Tower in Lower Manhattan, along with as many as a dozen other projects, said several of the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the investigation is continuing.

The investigation has also raised questions about past work done by the company, Testwell Laboratories Inc., at a wide range of sites around the city. Construction and inspection practices in the city are already under scrutiny as a result of a series of fatal accidents and arrests on corruption charges.

Hey, it's strictly business...

Bloggin' In The Years: 1975

So why haven't we done anything about oil?

In large part, the lawmakers' reluctance to vote a tough program of energy conservation stems from the complacency of their constituents: the long lines at the gas pump were short-lived. The immediate problem seems not supply but price. Those high prices, in combination with the recession, have al ready appreciably cut into U.S. oil demand. Why make the voters back home suffer, the legislators' reasoning goes, by enacting unpopular measures that might or might not reduce consumption further?

As the U.S. pulls out of its economic slump, however, the demand for oil will rise, and with it the need for a conservation policy with teeth that would decrease imports and slow down depletion of domestic supplies. Alongside it should come a program — funded in part by energy taxes aimed at inducing conservation — to exploit domestic potential to the fullest.

It seems to me we could go a long way towards reducing out addiction to foreign oil by building cars that run on both gas and electricity. Or maybe even compressed air.

It's the Year of the Shark.

Jaws, which opens in 490 theaters this week, is part of a bracing revival of high adventure films and thrillers over the past few months (see box page 44). It is expensive ($8 million), elaborate, technically intricate and wonderfully crafted, a movie whose every shock is a devastating surprise. Like Earthquake, it takes a panic-producing disaster and shows how a representative cross section of humanity responds to it. Like The Exorcist, it deals with an essentially unknowable, therefore unpredictable and thoroughly spooky symbol of evil. Jaws promises to hit right in the old collective unconscious and to draw millions irresistibly to the box office.

And it will keep people who have never seen an ocean from dipping their toes into the local swimming pool. After which they'll go back and see it again.

McClintonites

McCain needs to stay far, far away from former Clinton fanatics:

Take Will Bower, the founder of a group called PUMA ('Party Unity My Ass'). On Saturday, Bower met with John McCain. On Wednesday, Bower attended Larry Sinclair's press conference, saw Sinclair literally accuse Obama of murder, saw Sinclair's lawyer wearing a kilt, saw Sinclair flee the room after the press conference because he was moments away from being arrested, and came away saying that Sinclair's story was 'worth exploring'. That means that McCain is either one or two degrees removed from the lunatic fringe, depending on what you think of Bower's state of mind.

Another of the people McCain met with, Paula Abeles, has a history of unethical and arguably racist behavior. Another was Harriet Christian, who gained her 15 minutes of notoriety by referring to Barack Obama as an 'inadequate black man'. Another is an author for the blog/conspiracist site No Quarter, which within the past week has accused of Obama of behavior ranging from having a liaison with Sinclair to promoting pedophilia through his Kids for Obama website.

There is too much risk to McCain that one of these people will become even more unhinged, and do or say something that gives him guilt by association problems. This really isn't that far removed from meeting with the '9/11 trUthers for Johnny MAC!' Facebook group.

Considering the McCain campaign's past troubles with distancing themselves from nutcases on the right, this is potential political poison for them. They don't like you, Senator-they just hate Obama more.

Doomsday Postponed

There's no need to panic.

Europe's CERN particle-physics lab has issued its long-awaited report on safety issues surrounding the Large Hadron Collider, the world's biggest and most expensive atom-smasher. Some have feared that when the collider reaches full power, sometime next year, it might create microscopic black holes or other exotic phenomena that could endanger Earth. The new report, like earlier safety studies, rules out the possibility of global danger.

Critics of the collider are pursuing a federal lawsuit challenging the safety claims - and they're likely to continue the doomsday debate even in the wake of this report.

The report's argument follows the basic line used in past reports: Even the most energetic collisions planned for the LHC are far less powerful than cosmic-ray collisions that have been going on for billions of years.

'Nature has already generated on Earth as many collisions as about a million LHC experiments – and the planet still exists,' CERN said in its lay-language summary of the report. 'Astronomers observe an enormous number of larger astronomical bodies throughout the universe, all of which are also struck by cosmic rays. The universe as a whole conducts more than 10 million million LHC-like experiments per second. The possibility of any dangerous consequences contradicts what astronomers see - stars and galaxies still exist.'

Well, I was at least hoping we'd all get superpowers or something. I'm still keeping my fingers crossed when they turn that sucker on, though.

Finding Your Inner Perry Mason

Call it Lawyer Lite:

Northwestern University is today announcing a new choice for those applying to its law school: a degree in just two years.

Such an option would have been impossible until 2004, when the American Bar Association lifted a requirement that law degrees follow six semesters of instruction. In 2005, the University of Dayton introduced a two-year option that officials there say has been a success. Northwestern is among the bigger names in legal education, however, so its move may have more of an impact.

The Northwestern program, like Dayton’s, is one of five semesters. Starting next year, some Northwestern law students will begin their courses the summer immediately after they are admitted, rather than in the fall. Then students would enroll in the regular fall and spring semesters for the next two academic years, leaving time for the traditional law internship between the two full years. Students would complete the same number of courses and credits in the two- and three-year programs, with accelerated students simply taking an extra course most semesters.

It could be an accelerated path into politics for all those would-be Barack Obamas out there.

Barack's Millions

Maybe this is the real reason McCain is so upset:

Though Obama risks a short-term political backlash by seeming to go back on his word, Democratic and Republican strategists say most campaigns would take such a hit in exchange for the unprecedented cash advantage he'll derive.

McCain said Thursday he will accept public financing, meaning he'll be limited to spending only $84.1 million in the critical window between the Republican National Convention and Election Day. He'll be forced to lean more heavily on the Republican National Committee and outside groups that he cannot legally coordinate spending decisions with.

In that same time period, Obama will continue to be free to raise and spend unlimited amounts — with advertising specialists and party insiders projecting that he will bring in hundreds of millions of dollars, utilizing and expanding on the most efficient fundraising operation in American political history.

'He's going to be able to raise almost unimaginable amount of money,' said Tad Devine, a Democratic strategist who was a top adviser in the Gore and Kerry campaigns. 'This is an incredible advantage for him and his campaign. He'll be able to dictate the terms of this election.'

Campaign finance reform? What's that?

My Toy Girlfriend

It's robot fever in miniature.

A Japanese firm has produced a 38 cm (15 inch) tall robotic girlfriend that kisses on command, to go on sale in September for around US$175, with a target market of lonely adult men.

Using her infrared sensors and battery power, the diminutive damsel named 'EMA' puckers up for nearby human heads, entering what designers call its 'love mode'.

'Strong, tough and battle-ready are some of the words often associated with robots, but we wanted to break that stereotype and provide a robot that's sweet and interactive,' said Minako Sakanoue, a spokeswoman for the maker, Sega Toys.

'She's very lovable and though she's not a human, she can act like a real girlfriend.'

And provide a backup for Ken when Barbie leaves him.

Bloggin' In The Years: 1978

Meet the man behind the Revolution.

Jarvis, 75, the man behind Proposition 13, calls himself 'a rugged bastard who's had his head kicked in a thousand times by the government.' In a state known for its smooth-talking, image-conscious politicians, he is a gruff, rumpled throwback to Mencken's soap box demagogues. The face is bulldoggish, the figure dumpy, the voice a throaty croak. There are no silken buzz words in Jarvis' earthy speeches. In his repertory of epithets, Republicans are 'the stupidest people in the world except for businessmen, who have a genius for stupidity'; the League of Women Voters is 'a bunch of nosy broads who front for the big spenders'; others who oppose his beloved proposition, 'dummies, goons, cannibals or big-mouths.' The tax issue, he says, is 'Armageddon, a war of machetes. They're going to cut off our heads. Or we're going to cut off theirs.'

What, no guillotines are available?

Lift Embargo

Who run Bartertown? Not us.

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - European Union states agreed on Thursday to scrap sanctions against Cuba but will insist the Communist island improves its human rights record, EU External Relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner said.

The decision, taken despite U.S. calls for the world to remain tough on Havana, will be reviewed after one year, EU sources said.

'Cuban sanctions will be lifted,' Ferrero-Waldner told reporters after foreign ministers of the 27-nation bloc clinched agreement at a summit dinner in Brussels.

'Of course there is clear language on human rights, on the detention of prisoners and there will have to be a review also,' she said, referring to statement to be issued later.

With Fidel out and the other Old Fidel at least talking reform, trade with the outside world can only improve things in Cuba in the long run-if their attempts at keeping the Revolution going don't get in the way.

Welcome To Club Fed

Who needs regulation when the crooks are going to jail?

Since March 1, 406 people have been arrested in the sting dubbed 'Operation Malicious Mortgage' that saw 144 cases across the country. Sixty people were arrested on Wednesday alone, including in Chicago, Miami, Houston and a dozen other regions policed by the FBI.

In a separate sweep, two former Bear Stearns managers in New York were indicted Thursday, becoming the first executives to face criminal charges related to the collapse of the subprime mortgage market.

Across the country, reports of mortgage fraud have soared over the past year as the subprime mortgage market collapsed and defaults and foreclosures soared.

They wanted the bling. Now they get to be somebody else's plaything.

Cancel Your Travel Plans

If not now, then perhaps soon.

Is it likely that prosecutions will be brought overseas? Yes. It is reasonably likely. Sands's book contains an interview with an investigating magistrate in a European nation, which he describes as a NATO nation with a solidly pro-American orientation which supported U.S. engagement in Iraq with its own soldiers. The magistrate makes clear that he is already assembling a case, and is focused on American policymakers. I read these remarks and they seemed very familiar to me. In the past two years, I have spoken with two investigating magistrates in two different European nations, both pro-Iraq war NATO allies. Both were assembling war crimes charges against a small group of Bush administration officials. 'You can rest assured that no charges will be brought before January 20, 2009,' one told me. And after that? 'It depends. We don't expect extradition. But if one of the targets lands on our territory or on the territory of one of our cooperating jurisdictions, then we'll be prepared to act.'

So if these guys stay home, could that be considered putting them under house arrest?

A Perfect Electoral Storm

In a response to the notion that climate change could help Republicans, Ryan Avent gets down to the bottom line:

But to see why the GOP will ultimately have to join Democrats on this issue or face political disaster, all you have to do is pick up a newspaper, or talk about the news with anyone who doesn’t cover these issues for a living. The weather has been really freaky recently, and that’s not coincidental. It’s going to get worse. You’re going to see oddly intense storms, and stories about droughts and desertification, and heart-wrenching tales of cuddly animal extinctions. And then you’re going to see pictures of thousands of dead Bangladeshis and millions of climate refugees. And the GOP is going to win electoral victory forever by saying that all we need to do is build bigger levies.

Again, the problem here is one of perception. The Republicans are perceived by most as being wrong on just about every issue. On the one area where they could take some of the argument away from the Democrats and the doomsday hype they give the appearance of having their heads stuck in the sand or up their rear ends. Acting like you're either indifferent or in denial (and where have we seen that before?) isn't the way to convince people that you have the better argument, guys.

Black Gold, Baghdad Tea

Here's more good news that probably won't get a lot of attention.

Four Western oil companies are in the final stages of negotiations this month on contracts that will return them to Iraq, 36 years after losing their oil concession to nationalization as Saddam Hussein rose to power.

Exxon Mobil, Shell, Total and BP — the original partners in the Iraq Petroleum Company — along with Chevron and a number of smaller oil companies, are in talks with Iraq's Oil Ministry for no-bid contracts to service Iraq's largest fields, according to ministry officials, oil company officials and an American diplomat.

The deals, expected to be announced on June 30, will lay the foundation for the first commercial work for the major companies in Iraq since the American invasion, and open a new and potentially lucrative country for their operations.

More like this, please. If it means getting out sooner rather than later, I'm for it.

It's Good To Be The King

Seriously, who buys stuff like this?

A new burger went on sale Wednesday only in Britain. It may not only be the world's most expensive, but it could also be the most controversial, too.

It comes from Burger King, but Burger 'Bling' may be more like it.

Is it mouthwatering? Maybe. But it comes at an eye-watering price -- a whopping $200.

'That would have to be one really, really special burger,' Erika Baroness Von Schubert said. 'I'd give it a go.'

Burger chef Mark Dowding said the formula is simple.

'Like any good food you start out with great ingredients,' Dowding said.

Or most expensive. Check this out. The burger's ingredients include the following: Japanese wagyu beef, white truffles, onions fried in Cristal champagne, topped with pink Himalayan rock salt.

If I could afford something like that I wouldn't waste my money at Burger King. I'd have my personal chef make it for me, for crying out loud.

Busting The Bigots Within

At least they caught this guy:

The Texas Republican Party is distancing itself from a vendor who sold campaign buttons at last weekend's state convention that asked, 'If Obama is president ... will we still call it The White House?'

The state GOP party said Wednesday that it will donate the $1,500 rent it collected from the vendor, Republicanmarket.com, to Midwestern flood victims.

State GOP spokesman Hans Klingler said the party does not vet the merchandise being sold, but officials plan to discuss doing so in the future. The button sales at the convention in Houston were first reported in the Dallas Morning News.

'This vendor need not apply to another Texas GOP state convention,' Klingler said. 'We will neither tolerate nor profit from bigotry.'

Barack Obama, who clinched the Democratic nomination this month, is the first black presidential nominee of a major party.

Unfortunately, there will probably be plenty more where this came from. Stupidity seems to be at a premium this election.

Nukes, Nukes, And More Nukes

The Maverick wants those reactors:

Sen. John McCain called Wednesday for the construction of 45 new nuclear reactors by 2030 and pledged $2 billion a year in federal funds 'to make clean coal a reality,' measures designed to reduce dependence on foreign oil.

In a third straight day of campaigning devoted to the energy issue, the Republican presidential nominee-in-waiting also said the only time Democratic rival Barack Obama voted for a tax cut was for a 'break for the oil companies.'

McCain said the 104 nuclear reactors currently operating around the country produce about 20 percent of the nation's annual electricity needs.

'Every year, these reactors alone spare the atmosphere from the equivalent of nearly all auto emissions in America. Yet for all these benefits, we have not broken ground on a single nuclear plant in over thirty years,' he said. 'And our manufacturing base to even construct these plants is almost gone.'

Of course, the left will wonder why we can build reactors but not Iran. Maybe because we're not threatening Mexico or Canada with eradication?

Bloggin' In The Years: 1950

I guess one man's cult is another man's cure-all:

In many ways, dianetics-('the science of mind') is the poor man's psychoanalysis; it has a touch of Couéism and a mild resemblance to Buchmanite confession. It purports to cleanse the mind of previous harmful influences, thus vastly increasing its powers and efficiency, by making the individual relive former painful experiences to 'discharge' their evil power. According to dianetics' discoverer, L. (for Lafayette) Ron (for Ronald) Hubbard: 'The hidden source of all psychosomatic ills and human aberration has been discovered and skills have been developed for their invariable cure.' Sample ills: arthritis, allergies, asthma, some coronary difficulties, eye trouble, ulcers, migraine headaches, sex deviations.

Maybe the North Koreans could benefit from this stuff...

Wanted: New Drills

President Bush wants to drill for more oil. Fine by me, except:

As President Bush calls for repealing a ban on drilling off most of the coast of the United States, a shortage of ships used for deep-water offshore drilling promises to impede any rapid turnaround in oil exploration and supply.

In recent years, this global shortage of drill-ships has created a critical bottleneck, frustrating energy company executives and constraining their ability to exploit known reserves or find new ones. Slow growth in oil supplies, at a time of soaring demand, has been a major factor in the spike of oil and gasoline prices.

Mr. Bush called on Congress Wednesday to end a longstanding federal ban on offshore drilling and open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for oil exploration, arguing that the steps were needed to lower gasoline prices and bolster national security. But even as oil trades at more than $135 a barrel — up from $68 a year ago — the world’s existing drill-ships are booked solid for the next five years.

Chances are that there may be another Republican president in office five years from now. Maybe he can take up the drilling cause-if it still exists.

Courtesy, Sir

Um, okay:

WASHINGTON — Senator Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut said Tuesday that he was aware that Countrywide Financial Corporation had assigned him to a V.I.P. program in 2003 when he refinanced mortgages on his homes in Connecticut and Washington but that he and his wife “assumed” that “it was more of a courtesy thing.”

Mr. Dodd insisted that they did not get favorable pricing.

As the Senate prepared to take up legislation intended to rescue homeowners at the brink of foreclosure, Mr. Dodd, a Democrat and chairman of the banking committee, defended himself against suggestions that he had received preferential treatment from Countrywide. At a tense news conference, he flatly denied seeking or receiving any discount from the lender.

Courteous corruption. Is that like honest graft?

Old Age Sexy

Well, we all get older.

A WHO report released in March found that one in four married couples in Japan had not made love in the previous year, while 38% of couples in their 50s no longer have sex at all. These figures were attributed to the stresses of Japanese working life. Yet, at the same time, the country has seen a surge in demand for pornography that has turned adult videos into a billion-dollar industry, with "elder porn" one of its fastest-growing genres.

(snip)

Japan's adult video industry is believed to be worth as much as $1 billion a year according to industry insiders, with the largest rental video store chain Tsutaya releasing about 1,000 new titles monthly, while the mega adult mail-order site DMM releases about 2,000 titles each month. Although films featuring women in their teens and 20s are the mainstay of the industry, a trend toward "mature women" has become evident over the past five years. Currently, about 300 of the 1,000 adult videos on offer at Tsutaya, and 400 out of the 2,000 at DMM, are "mature women" films.

Wait until our own baby boomers start hitting their golden years. Kids may be wondering why grandpa is spending so much time in the bedroom alone...

The Semi-Revolution Continues

So what do Cubans who have to work for a living think of Castro II's "Reforms?" Not much:

The younger Castro has won international attention for a series of eye-catching reforms that seemingly marked the beginning of the end of the rigid communist orthodoxy bequeathed by his 81-year-old brother.

Yet the lifting of bans on mobile phones, improved access to computers and other consumer goods, and the removal of unpopular restrictions on wages and foreign currency have so far had a limited impact on a poor population reeling from the effects of rising fuel and food prices.

Cubans have been voting with their feet, and those who succeed in reaching Miami have raised serious doubts about Raul Castro’s intentions as he tries to defuse mounting public criticism.

“It’s just a big facade to impress the people,” claimed Yhosvany Carmona, a popular young Cuban television actor who fled Havana via the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico and arrived in Miami last week. “Who are these people who can now afford to buy computers, cellphones and DVDs? They are the same people who could afford to buy them on the black market before.”

Castro Jr. may be trying the same thing that Gorbachev did, but Gorbachev at least had a country that wasn't isolated, backward and living in the past to work with. That was Stalin's Russia.

It's The Speculation, Stupid

John McCain has found someone to blame, er, the real cause, of high gas prices:

[W]e all know that some people on Wall Street are not above gaming the system. When you have enough speculators betting on the rising price of oil, that itself can cause oil prices to keep on rising. And while a few reckless speculators are counting their paper profits, most Americans are coming up on the short end -- using more and more of their hard-earned paychecks to buy gas for the truck, tractor, or family car.

Investigation is underway to root out this kind of reckless wagering, unrelated to any kind of productive commerce, because it can distort the market, drive prices beyond rational limits, and put the investments and pensions of millions of Americans at risk. Where we find such abuses, they need to be swiftly punished. And to make sure it never happens again, we must reform the laws and regulations governing the oil futures market, so that they are just as clear and effective as the rules applied to stocks, bonds, and other financial instruments. In all of these markets, reform must assure transparency, prevent abuse, and protect the public interest.

Speculators may be the bane of both the housing and oil markets-but is all this talk of "Punishing" Wall Street really the answer? And what form should said punishment take? With all due respect to the Maverick, this sounds more like (dare I say it) a left-wing attack on capitalism than it does a sound energy policy.

Take Your Stinking Hands Off Me, You Dirty Human

So does this mean that the Planet of the Apes will be put on hold?

The proposed rules affirm the right of people with disabilities to use guide dogs and other service animals in public places, but they tighten the definition to exclude certain species.

When the existing rules were adopted in the early 1990s, the Justice Department said, few people anticipated the current trend toward “the use of wild, exotic or unusual species” as service animals.

The proposed rules define a service animal as “any dog or other common domestic animal individually trained to do work or perform tasks” for a person with a physical or mental disability.

Under this definition, the administration says, monkeys could not qualify as service animals, nor would reptiles; amphibians; rabbits, ferrets and rodents; or most farm animals.

Well, my ferret stays at home. And my ape only drives me around; he doesn't go in places with me.

Blogs 1, AP 0

More on the AP's apparent willingness to commit public suicide:

The real problem for the A.P. is that it can’t win this argument, and by pressing the issue, they’re very likely to end up with a business model that dies overnight. And I don’t think I’m overstating that. Links are the currency of the Web, and the A.P. hard line spits in the face of that, which is leading to boycotts like Arrington’s. The monopoly co-operative is living in the past, but it needs that past to validate a business model that is as out-of-date as traditional media itself. Now, by pressing the matter, they run the significant risk of being in a contrary legal position, and what will be left for them after that?

They’ve announced that they’re willing to create a new policy, but that, too, is fraught with problems, for it can only shed further light on the weakness of their business model in a changing environment. Bloggers know that links go to the originator of the content, which would mean linking to the A.P.’s members, not the A.P. version thereof. When that happens, media companies will rightly ask why they need an expensive middle man in the equation. Always remember that the Web disrupts the middle of any transaction, including media. As such, the most enviable position in the new world is that of aggregator, but as Google News proves, there’s not exactly a whole lot of money to be made in so doing.

I think the dinosaur just realized that it's about to become extinct.

The Sound Of Silence

Michael Silence reports on the anti-AP revolt:

An online petition has been set-up urging bloggers to boycott the Associated Press (AP), after the agency filed takedown notices against Drudge Retort for use of its content on the site.
The campaign run by UnAssociatedPress has gained 75 signatures since it was set-up on Saturday and encourages bloggers to make use of other agency's material.

More here.

Also, TechCrunch's Michael Arrington is boycotting all AP materials, and he is asking other bloggers to do the same. 'So here's our new policy on A.P. stories: they don't exist. We don't see them, we don't quote them, we don't link to them. They're banned until they abandon this new strategy, and I encourage others to do the same until they back down from these ridiculous attempts to stop the spread of information around the Internet,' Arrington wrote.

Hey, what's good for the lamestream media...

And there's this, via Jeff Jarvis:

You’ve really done it now: You’ve pissed off Michael Arrington, who has joined the AP boycott.

The A.P. doesn’t get to make it’s own rule around how its content is used, if those rules are stricter than the law allows. So even thought they say they are making these new guidelines in the spirit of cooperation, it’s clear that, like the RIAA and MPAA, they are trying to claw their way to a set of legal property rights that don’t exist today. And like the RIAA and MPAA, this is done to protect a dying business model - paid content.

Jarvis also notes that he thinks this is the doing of shady lawyers who are relying on outdated laws to uphold said business model. I'm with him-send them on a long vacation (something the RIAA should've done a long time ago).

Tube Love

It seems Brazilians have found a new way to kill the mood (hat tip: Instapundit).

Many factors account for the drop in Brazilian fertility, but one recent study identified a factor most people probably wouldn't consider: soap operas (novelas).
...
During the past few decades, the vast majority of the population, of all social classes, has regularly tuned into the evening showings. The study, conducted by Eliana La Ferrara of Italy's Bocconi University and Alberto Chong and Suzanne Duryea of the Inter-American Development Bank, analyzed novelas aired from 1965 to 1999 in the top two time slots and found that they depict families that are much smaller than those in the real Brazil. Seventy-two percent of leading female characters age 50 or below had no children at all, and 21 percent had just one child. Hence, the authors hypothesized that the soap operas could be acting as a kind of birth control.

Using census data from 1970 to 1991 and data on the entry of Rede Globo into different markets, the researchers found that women living in areas that received Globo's broadcast signal had significantly lower fertility.

Maybe seeing the misery of fictional couples is helping Brazilian women avoid their own...

Made For Each Other

So much for the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy:

Fox News's newest contributor, to be announced today, may surprise the liberal crowd: former Clinton White House lawyer Lanny Davis.

'Fox has always treated me with respect and given me a chance to express my point of view,' Davis says of the network that the Democratic candidates refused to grant a debate out of concern that it favors Republicans. He will be a frequent guest, along with such Fox stalwarts as Karl Rove and Newt Gingrich.

A relentless surrogate for Hillary Clinton, Davis says, he felt 'ganged up on' during appearances on the other cable channels. He says that Clinton was 'demonized' by MSNBC's Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann, and that CNN's primary-night panels were tilted toward the Obama side.

'Does Fox have a conservative slant on some of their programs? Yes,' Davis says. 'They're giving me a chance to provide a counterpoint, and that's all I can ask.'

The Clinton-Rove Era didn't die, it just moved to Fox News.

"We Tax You For Your Health"

Speaking of sin taxes, at least New York is honest about them:

New York smokers have been sent outside in all kinds of weather, coughed at in disdain, and now they are burdened with the most expensive cigarette taxes in the nation. Now, to add cost to injury, the state is declaring its highest-in-the-nation cigarette tax a success.

The number of calls to the state's Smoker's Quitline quadrupled to nearly 10,000 calls during the week of June 2, when the full $2.75-a-pack tax kicked in, New York Health Commissioner Dr. Richard Daines said. Fewer than 2,300 people called for help during the same week in 2007.

'Not everyone that tries, quits,' Daines said. 'We estimate about 140,000 New Yorkers will successfully quit smoking. We may have more than a million try to cut down or stop, but this is how you get people to try: give them multiple chances and multiple reasons to stop.'

Nannystating-it's good for what ails you...

Taxation Without Intoxication

Now this is just un-American.

The 10 percent drink tax, in effect since January, was pushed along by Allegheny County Executive Dan Onorato to subsidize public transit. The two-term Democrat says he had no choice; swallow that, he said, or property taxes would have to be hiked.

Many bar and restaurant owners are frothing over the county surcharge, and are making sure that the name of its sponsor is as well-known as, say, Sam Adams and Jim Beam. With rising fuel and food costs and a weak economy, they say, the tax is just one big fly in their beer.

'I've been in this business for 40 years and I've never seen a more difficult or challenging time,' says Kevin Joyce, owner of The Carlton restaurant in downtown Pittsburgh.

Michael McDermott, who was nursing a lager at a downtown pizzeria, says he goes out only two nights a week now instead of three — just the kind of response bar owners fear.

'I cannot afford to drink as much as I used to,' says McDermott, 49, of Scott Township.

It's a sin tax. That's what they're used for.

The Prophet's Pick

For anyone else, this might have been the kiss of death.

Al Gore is endorsing Barack Obama and promising to help the Democrat achieve what eluded him - the presidency.

In a letter to be e-mailed to Obama supporters, the former vice president and Nobel Prize winner wrote, 'From now through Election Day, I intend to do whatever I can to make sure he is elected president of the United States.'

In 2000, Gore won the popular vote but lost the disputed 2000 election to George W. Bush, who captured Florida and its electoral votes after a divided Supreme Court ended the recount. Since then, Gore has made combatting global warming his signature issue, and has been recognized worldwide for his effort - from an Academy Award for a documentary for his effort to the Nobel prize.

'Over the past 18 months, Barack Obama has united a movement. He knows change does not come from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue or Capitol Hill. It begins when people stand up and take action,' Gore wrote. 'With the help of millions of supporters like you, Barack Obama will bring the change we so desperately need in order to solve our country's most pressing problems.'

Well, I don't support someone based on their endorsements. This is just Al trying to stay relevant. Obama doesn't need him to win.

Bloggin' In The Years: 1961

There's trouble in the Persian Gulf.

The Old Man has gone to the sea.

"It's either me or the General."

Just 24 hours before the start of nationwide strikes and demonstrations ordered by the powerful, left-wing National Front, nimble Premier Amini held a 90-minute conference with Front leaders, warned that 1) the Front was heavily infiltrated by Communist students and oil workers, and 2) should his government be brought down, it would be replaced by a military dictatorship headed by tough General Teymour Bakhtiar and supported by landlords and mullahs (Moslem religious leaders). General Bakhtiar makes no secret of his willingness, should the Shah call on him, to replace Amini's reformist program with simple repression. Last week the general was Jeeping through the mountainous interior of Iran, renewing old friendships with his clansmen in the nomadic Bakhtiari tribe, who can supply him with clouds of hard-fighting horsemen, if needed.

On second thought, the National Fronters canceled the scheduled protest strikes.

Reform or repression, take your pick.

The Summer Of Their Discontent

Guess what? Massive welfare states don't work. Especially when they encourage their citizens to do the same.

According to the Spanish Confederation of Employers’ Organizations (CEOE), Spanish workers held 334 strikes during the first four months of 2008, which resulted in the loss of 14.3 million man-hours of labor. These figures represent a 72 percent increase over the same period in 2007. During all of 2007, there were 852 strikes in Spain that resulted in the total loss of 22.5 million man-hours.

Considering all these grievances, it seems strange that Spanish voters in March gave Socialist Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero another four-year term in office. After all, pre-election polls showed that the majority of Spaniards knew full well that Spain was not on the right track, economically or otherwise.

And Zapatero's response? Apparently to imitate an ostrich:

So far Zapatero’s post-modern approach to Spain’s economic crisis seems based on three reality-evading pillars: denial, passing the blame, and more denial. His Plan A has involved a pop psychology campaign advising Spaniards that “pessimism does not create jobs.” Plan B blamed “radical liberalism,” which in euro-speak means the free market. Zapatero now wants to implement Plan C, a global advertising campaign in the world financial press designed to highlight his economic management skills.

Historically, this is usually the point where socialism ends and dictatorship begins. But even returning to a Franco-style state might be considered too much hard work for the Spaniards. And free-market democracy is so passe'. In Spain, it seems, summer days really ARE lazy days.

Armies Marching In The Street, Dressed Real Sharp, Dressed Real Neat

In a discussion about Iraq, a warning.

And negative issues?

Well, the negative ones, interestingly, are in some ways the flipside of the positive ones. The Iraqi Security Forces are now so large that there's some danger of Praetorianism—a coup d’état—growing in Iraq. Interestingly, when you look back to the pre-Petraeus era [before Gen. David Petraeus took command of coalition forces in Iraq in early 2007], one of the reasons that the ISF didn't grow so fast was because there were fears that if they got too big, they would either pose a threat to Iraq's neighbors or a threat to Iraq's civilian government. There was a worry that there'd be a coup d'état if the Iraqi security forces got too big.

Now that it's bigger, you think this is a possibility?

Well, I think it's a growing possibility. I think one of the things our presence does is moderate and mitigate that dramatically. It's much harder to imagine a Praetorian solution, a coup d'état, a military government as long as we are there. If we were to leave, you could easily imagine a situation in which the military as the most effective institution in society decides to take over. The parliament is the least respected institution in Iraqi society.

And the ministries in the executive branch are typically doing a very poor job of delivering essential services to the public. It's not uncommon in the developing world to get situations in which, in the presence of a dysfunctional and unpopular civilian government, soldiers stand up and seize the reins.

A coup may happen, but if so it would happen no matter when we leave. The question that needs to be answered is, do we stay indefinitely or do we at least leave the country in better shape than when we went in so that the impact of a coup would be less painful?

And He Wasn't Even Elected

Now this is just downright embarrassing:

An internal investigation by the National Republican Congressional Committee has determined that $725,000 is missing from its fund-raising accounts, money that the group says was stolen as part of a six-year scheme carried out by its former treasurer.

The committee, which raises money for Republican Congressional candidates, announced on Thursday the results of a forensic audit, focusing on the activities of its former treasurer, Christopher J. Ward. It said Mr. Ward had fabricated financial statements to hide the missing money, which went undetected until January.

Mr. Ward oversaw the collection and distribution of over $360 million from Republican donors while collecting $120,000 a year as treasurer. He made $10,000 a year as treasurer for the President’s Dinner Committee, the party’s biggest annual fund-raising event. He also served as treasurer for the campaigns of 80 other Republican candidates, many of whom have also said money was missing.

The thefts are both embarrassing and painful for the committee, which has been struggling to raise money for what is expected to be a tough year for Republican House candidates. According to the most recent federal filings, the Republican committee has only $6.7 million in cash on hand; in contrast, its Democratic counterpart has $45 million.

“We have been deceived and betrayed for a number of years by a highly respected and trusted individual,” said Representative Tom Cole of Oklahoma, chairman of the N.R.C.C. Mr. Cole added that the Federal Bureau of Investigation was conducting a criminal investigation into Mr. Ward’s actions.

Now he knows how the voters have felt for the past several years.

The Gaffe News Network

It's getting embarrassing over in Hannityland.

Rupert Murdoch's Fox News television station has been forced to apologise to Barack Obama for the third time in a fortnight after screening a racially tinged caption referring to his wife Michelle as his 'baby mama'.

Bill Shine, senior vice president of programming at Fox, said in a statement on Thursday that a producer 'exercised poor judgment' during the segment.

The statement came as Obama established a website to help counter what he referred to as smears and rumours."

(snip)

Fox, seen by liberals as a cheerleader for the Republican party, carried an interview this week with the conservative columnist Michelle Malkin about whether Michelle Obama was being unfairly targeted.

During the interview, a caption was flashed up saying: "Outraged liberals: Stop picking on Obama's baby mama." The term is slang for a woman who has a baby with a man who is neither her partner nor boyfriend.

The apology comes just over a week after one of Fox's anchormen expressed regret for a comment on the night that Obama won the Democratic nomination. Obama, in a show of affection, lightly touched his fist against Michelle's and the anchorwoman referred to it as a "terrorist fist jab". Previously, a Fox contributor Liz Trotta had to apologise after making a joke about Obama being assassinated.

Maybe they just want to get the ignorance out of the way before Obama officially wins the nomination.

It's Only Money

I would hope that President McCain's spending habits would be better than his personal ones.

Senators John McCain and Barack Obama released their Senate financial disclosure statements on Friday, revealing that Mr. McCain and his wife had at least $225,000 in credit card debt and that Mr. Obama and his wife had put more than $200,000 into college funds for their daughters.

The bulk of the McCains’ obligations stemmed from a pair of American Express credit cards that are held in Cindy McCain’s name. According to the disclosure reports, which present information on debts in a range rather than providing a precise figure, Mrs. McCain owed $100,000 to $250,000 on each card.

Barack Obama-personal finances we can believe in?

Foul Play

Say it ain't so:

According to a new survey of 907 people released exclusively to Ad Age today, more than one-third (37%) of respondents believe that the National Basketball Association somewhat or very likely alters the outcomes of its games.

Even prior to disgraced referee Tim Donaghy's allegations earlier this week that NBA executives and referees manipulated game results to boost ticket sales and TV ratings, more than one-third of respondents believe that the NBA somewhat or very likely alters the outcomes of its games.

The YouGovPolimetrix Omnibus Poll found that among 'casual' or 'avid' fans, an even higher number, 41%, think it's either very likely or somewhat likely that the NBA alters the outcome of games. Couple that with the fact that only 46% of the poll was aware that an NBA referee was recently investigated by the FBI for receiving cash payments in return for passing inside information along to friends and gamblers, and it's clear the NBA has a lot of cynicism to overcome.

Poll preceded Donaghy scandal

That's especially true when taken together with the fact that the study was conducted on June 2-4, prior to disgraced referee Tim Donaghy's allegations earlier this week that NBA executives and referees manipulated game results to boost ticket sales and TV ratings.

Not being an "Avid" fan, I can't say I'm too surprised by this. Even if the game is mostly clean, we live in an age where it's sort of expected. And that's kind of sad.

Tim Russert, R.I.P.

As has been reported throughout the day, Tim Russert is gone:

Tim Russert, moderator of NBC’s 'Meet the Press' and one of the world's best-known journalists, died Friday afternoon after collapsing at the network’s Washington bureau, officials said.

Russert, who was also the bureau chief, was preparing for Sunday's broadcast and felt ill, the officials said.

He was 58. His death was announced on NBC at 3:39 p.m. by Tom Brokaw, who had been his companion this winter and spring through long nights of Democratic primary coverage on MSNBC.

Russert always struck me as a tough but fair guy, who made accountability and honesty his top priorities. To sum up his life and accomplishments in a single post is difficult at best, but this is as good a description as any:

When asked what most struck her about Russert, Kearns Goodwin said: "The most extraordinary thing about him was that he just had such unparalleled empathy for whoever he was talking with. You never had the feeling he was trying to get somebody, he just wanted to get them to talk and wanted to get the record straight and his emotional self was as strong as his intellect. As a journalist there was such a strength of his person to everyone who knew him knew. He was just beloved.

In an age of smug "News analysts" and bland talking heads, Russert was the real deal-an old-school journalist who wasn't afraid to ask anybody, no matter which party they were from, the tough questions. But he was also, to borrow a certain news network's catchphrase, fair and balanced. He will be missed.

The Post-Hip Hop President

Could a Barack Obama presidency be what finally kills off bling?

Lately I've been wondering what an Obama White House might mean for the future of bling. For the fate of heavy gold, medallions, below-the-butt denim, the whole hip-hop gangsta fashion habit. What if January 20, 2009 turned out to be not just a cultural and clothing pivot point for adults -- a return to the minimalism of sleek, 60s-era sharkskin suits, the containment of golf-ball sized Barbara Bush costume pearls -- but a watershed fashion moment for teenaged boys?

Picture it. On Inauguration Day next year, thousands and thousands of young men and boys from city street corners to suburbs, look up from their X-Boxes and catch a glimpse of the impeccable President Barack and First Lady Michelle Obama climbing the steps of the Capitol and suddenly feel... unfashionable. Out of it. Old. What if they are overcome by the same stunned, something's-happening-here feeling that teenagers in the early 60s, their closets full of sock hop regalia, felt when they first laid eyes on The Beatles in 1964, on the nationally televised Ed Sullivan Show. For adults, this kind of moment is, at most, something to take note of. To a teenager, it's a gale force warning of imminent social tsunami, an urgent prod from the eyeballs and the amygdala that to everything there is a season, and now is the time to change, change, change. Ask not what you can do for your closet, but what your closet, if ignored, can do to you.

Barack Obama, the post-Gangsta president? Yeah, I could live with that.

Dead End Street

What's the matter with this guy? Doesn't he know that endless occupation is good for his country?

AMMAN, Jordan - Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki says talks with the United States on a longterm security agreement have reached a 'dead end.' Al-Maliki says the talks slumped because each side refused the other's demands.

He says the initial framework agreed upon was to have been an accord 'between two completely sovereign states.' But he says the U.S. proposals 'do not take into consideration Iraq's sovereignty.'

The prime minister said Friday 'this is not acceptable.' The American demands 'violate Iraqi sovereignty. At the end, we reached a dead end.'

Sovereignity-what a concept.

Bloggin' In The Years: 1996

Waco, it wasn't.

The Freemen were escorted from the 960-acre 'Justus Township' compound in a Winnebago motorhome and turned over to FBI agents one by one by lead negotiator Edwin Clark, who drove an escort car to the ranch gate. They were being taken to Yellowstone County Jail in Billings, Montana, the FBI said.

They gave themselves up to FBI officials at the entrance to their ranch, which has been their traditional meeting place with negotiators during the 81-day standoff.

FBI Director Louis J. Freeh lauded the policy of 'patience and resoluteness' that he credited for the peaceful outcome.

'I think the American people can take great comfort that the law was enforced and that it was done in a way that did not do harm to anyone,' he said at an evening news conference at FBI headquarters in Washington.

'We tried a fundamentally different approach,' said Freeh, noting the criticism the FBI heard for the deadly shootout at Ruby Ridge, Idaho three years ago.

President Clinton expressed pride in the FBI's handling of the episode, telling a White House state dinner audience, 'We will all say a little prayer tonight for this peaceful settlement of a difficult situation.'

I don't know what it is that draws people to these nutbars. It can't be the snazzy uniforms.

Now you can look at all the dirty pictures you want.

Cheers echoed through cyberspace Wednesday after a panel of federal judges Wednesday blocked enforcement of a new law barring "indecent" material on the Internet. In a 3-0 decision, the judges said the vast information highway is protected by the First Amendment.

In trying to make legal sense of the Internet, the panel granted a preliminary injunction against the Communications Decency Act, which punishes the distribution to minors of obscene or indecent material over the Internet. President Clinton says the Justice Department is reviewing today's decision.

Ultimately, the panel sided with opponents who say the law is an unconstitutional ban on free speech.

"Just as the strength of the Internet is chaos, so the strength of our liberty depends upon the chaos and cacophony of the unfettered speech the First Amendment protects," the judges wrote.

Betty Turock, president of the American Library Association -- one of the groups that brought the legal action -- hailed the ruling as "a victory for librarians, everyone who uses libraries and everyone who believes in free speech."

From my cold, dead fingers you'll take my mouse...

Enter The Obamacons

There could be a lesson here on why Obama may have more appeal among frustrated conservatives than some on the right may be willing to admit:

The largest group of Obamacons hail from the libertarian wing of the movement. And it's not just Andrew Sullivan. Milton and Rose Friedman's son, David, is signed up with the cause on the grounds that he sees Obama as the better vessel for his father's cause. Friedman is convinced of Obama's sympathy for school vouchers--a tendency that the Democratic primaries temporarily suppressed. Scott Flanders, the CEO of Freedom Communications--the company that owns The Orange County Register--told a company meeting that he believes Obama will accomplish the paramount libertarian goals of withdrawing from Iraq and scaling back the Patriot Act.

Reagan Democrats helped revive the Republican Party by crossing over. Could "Obama Libertarians" do the same for an increasingly moribund conservative movement?

The Vice Prophet

Not this again.

Though it’s been tossed around by the right-wing since 2000, with accelerating fervor since his Nobel and Oscar wins, Gore’s brand is still superlative among Democrats. He has no obvious problems with women or white voters, either. His initial appeal on the national stage was as a moderate, southern legislator from the center of the country. Gore carried his home state in both 1992 and 1996, though lost it to George W. Bush by 80,000 votes in 2000. Tennessee, however, is not one typically mentioned as up for grabs for Democrats in 2008. And Cheney has quipped that he certainly didn’t pick, uh, himself to win Wyoming.

My bet, though, is that nearby states like Virginia, North and South Carolina and even Missouri and Indiana might be favorable to a Gore bus tour or two. And the bar for his campaign performance is quite low, given how long he’s been off the trail. In this shortened general election, his celebrity stature could serve him no worse than it did Hillary Clinton in the early primaries. His presence, and indeed, just what he has to say to Americans, eight years on, will grab attention and merit debate. What better way to remind voters of the primal scene of the Bush era, and starve attention from John McCain?

Look, I know there are some folks out there who still want revenge for 2000. But Obama represents the future, not the past. At any rate, why would the Man On A Mission be willing to settle for second place again?

True Stories

Call it Tragedy Literature:

Borders bookshop has a “Real Lives” section. Waterstones ups the ante with “Painful Lives”. Amazon’s catch-all is the more enigmatic “True Endurance and Survival”. But earlier this week I found myself in the “Tragic Life Stories” aisle of WHSmiths. After taking in that, yes, a whole section of shelving had actually been given over to this subject, it struck me that while each book pertained to be a traumatic tale of an individual, they were marketed in such a way as to look entirely the same. Unlike the covers within the nearby Crime section, where even the most conventional might feature a gun, a knife, or something vaguely noir-ish; within Tragic Life Stories there is, apparently, no need to differentiate details. Each one is a tragic tale; each one has the same cover: a child’s face and a scrawled, handwritten title.

I don't know if this means that writers are running out of ideas or if there's simply more profit in pulling peoples' heartstrings. At any rate, I thought the mainstream media already cornered the market on misery.

What Say Lou?

Oh good Lord, I hope not.

Several well-connected Republicans say they've heard the buzz that Dobbs, famous for his sharp commentary about Washington policies and politics, may be turning his sights on Trenton and has inquired about the steps necessary to start a campaign.

Reached by telephone yesterday morning at his home -- a 300-acre horse farm in Wantage, Sussex County -- Dobbs would not say whether he has any such plans. Asked if he wanted to deny it, Dobbs said, 'I'm just not going to comment.'

It is not the first time Dobbs, the host and managing editor of CNN's 'Lou Dobbs Tonight,' has been touted as a potential candidate. Around New Year's, his name was floated as a possible independent candidate for president, but he never entered the fray. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal in January, he downplayed the idea of entering politics but said, 'I cannot say 'never.'

Dobbs, 62, first registered to vote in Sussex County in 1991 as a Republican, then switched to independent in 2006, according to the county Board of Elections.
State Republican chairman Tom Wilson said Dobbs' interest in the Garden State's governorship is circulating among Republican officials and fundraisers in Manhattan and Washington. Several told The Star-Ledger they had heard about it, although not directly from Dobbs.

'It's certainly a fun and interesting rumor,' said Wilson, 'but if he's seriously interested, he'd be better off talking to people who actually live in New Jersey and who know what it takes to mount a campaign for governor.'

Haven't the people of New Jersey been punished enough already?

Stay Lazy Longer

They heart bums:

The House approved extended jobless benefits for the long-term unemployed Thursday, with Democrats capturing a narrow two-thirds majority that could boost chances for action in the Senate.

Thirteen Republican absentees contributed to the victory, but the 274-137 vote was a lesson in the advantages of Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) backing up for a moment and avoiding the short-cuts that failed just 24 hours before.

Forty-nine Republicans Thursday joined in support of the package, which promises up to 13 additional weeks in jobless benefits to workers in all states and a total of 26 in states with a seasonally adjusted 6 percent unemployment rate — well above the national average.

Again, why do those Republicans still in office go along with this stuff? It's like they want to be a minority party.

Who Watches The Protectors?

President Bush, responding to the Court's decision:

President Bush, who is traveling in Europe, said he disagreed with the Guantanamo ruling but promised to abide by it.

'Congress and the administration worked very carefully on a piece of legislation that set the appropriate procedures in place as to how to deal with the detainees,' he said. 'We'll study this opinion, and we'll do so with this in mind to determine whether or not additional legislation might be appropriate so that we can safely say, truly say to the American people, 'we are doing everything we can to protect you.'

The Pentagon declined to comment, and the Justice Department said it was reviewing the decision and was expected to comment later Thursday.

Notice that Bush didn't say, "We'll respect your rights." It was "We'll protect you." But who protects us from this Administration?

Smokin'

OMG! Not...Barack!

ABC News' Sunlen Miller Reports: Senator Barack Obama told reporters in St. Louis today that he has fallen off the wagon and smoked cigarettes in the last few months.

Watch the VIDEO HERE.

The presumptive Democratic nominee has been open about his smoking past: Once a heavy smoker, he publicly gave up the habit, per his wife’s request, to run for president.

Since quitting, Obama has indicated in the past that he has “fallen off the wagon” but before today was not specific about how recent his smoking was.

“Months,” Obama said of the last time he has smoked.

Well that's it. He's totally unelectable now.

Road Rage Warriors

Is this a harbinger of things to come?

Two lorry drivers have been killed in fuel protests in Spain and Portugal as the hauliers' strike continues.

One was killed in the Spanish city of Granada when he was run over by a van trying to drive through a picket line.

The other driver died after reportedly trying to stop a lorry at a barricade near Alcanena, north of the Portuguese capital Lisbon, on Tuesday.

Spaniards are stockpiling fuel and food as hauliers blockade major cities in protest at rising diesel prices.

Regarding the death of the driver in Spain, a Spanish interior ministry spokesman told national radio: 'We regret the death of this person and hope it makes everyone realise that no dispute is worth the death of anyone.'

Maybe those survivalists weren't so crazy after all...

Africa, Phone Home

I guess they don't worry about brain cancer:

Africa now has 300 million mobile phone subscribers and 'a penetration rate fast approaching 30%,' according to an article in the latest Receiver, Vodafone's online magazine. Many more people use them, of course, because they work as pay phones. If you need to make a call, you can hail a boda boda. Ken Banks, the author, writes:


Mobile phones are attached to bikes (two and three wheelers), and even boats, and taken to where the business is. In Uganda these bikes, known locally as boda bodas, are hooked up with spare batteries and desktop mobile devices to create what are affectionately known as 'Bodafones'. I met the owner of one on Kampala Road last summer, and got talking to him through the universally accepted language of English Premier League football.


Some mobile phone functions can be more useful in Africa than Abingdon, such as the ability to work as a torch. Charging phones is more of a problem, though the arrival of cheap solar panels should help solve that.

The free market, slowly but surely coming to Africa whether local dictators like it or not.

Dennis The Menace Strikes Again

Better luck next time

The House has voted to send articles of impeachment against President Bush to a committee that is not likely to hold hearings before the end of his term.

By 251-166, House members dispatched the measure to a committee on Wednesday — a procedure often used to kill legislation.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi long ago declared the prospects for impeachment proceedings 'off the table.'

Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, who ran for president earlier this year, insists that his resolution deserves more consideration. He spent more than four hours Monday night reading his 35 articles of impeachment into the record, including charges that Bush manufactured a false case for going to war against Iraq.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said Tuesday that the Democratic-led Congress was holding the Bush administration accountable and questioned spending time on impeachment in the 'waning months of this administration's tenure.'

An election looms in which every House seat, a third of those in the Senate and the presidency are up for grabs. House leaders are staunchly against spending the remaining time in the abbreviated legislative schedule on impeachment proceedings.

Translation: the Democrats can taste a massive victory this year and they don't want Dennis the Menace screwing it up with his antics.

Enjoy Your Stay

Welcome to the Olympics, Chinese style:

Foreigners attending the Beijing Olympics better behave -- or else.

The Beijing Olympic organizing committee issued a stern, nine-page document Monday that covers 57 topics. Written in Chinese only and posted on the official Web site, the guide covers everything from a ban on sleeping outdoors to the need for government permission to stage a protest.

Visitors also should know this:

Those with 'mental diseases' or contagious conditions will be barred.

Some parts of the country are closed to visitors -- one of them Tibet.

Olympic tickets are no guarantee of a visa to enter China.

Fearing protests during the August 8-24 Olympics, China's government has tightened controls on visas and residence permits for foreigners. It has also promised a massive security presence at the games, which may include undercover agents dressed as volunteers.

Wow, it's like they turned the country over to airport screeners or something.

Bloggin' In The Years: 1967

To search or not to search?

Speaking for the court, Justice Byron R. White held that warrants are necessary not only because inspections may result in criminal charges but also because the Fourth Amendment is primarily aimed at securing privacy against 'arbitrary invasions by government officials.' On the other hand, White was mindful that rigid warrant rules might cripple inspections. He announced a compromise: inspectors need not specify 'probable cause' that a particular violation has occurred before they make a search. Instead, warrants for 'area inspections' may be issued simply because an area is due for inspection.

Speaking for three alarmed dissenters, Justice Tom Clark denounced the compromise on grounds that it weakens probable-cause standards and 'degrades' the Fourth Amendment. Calling the decision an 'absurdity,' Clark envisioned magistrates rubber-stamping thousands of 'area' warrants, deluging inspectors in paperwork—and allowing unscrupulous slumlords to delay repairs. Clark accused the court of 'striking down hundreds of city ordinances throughout the country and jeopardizing thereby the health, welfare and safety of literally millions of people.'

Well, there's public safety, and then there's privacy. When it comes to the Constitution, the law should err on the side of caution.

The hippies are getting airtime.

The South just became a little less segregated.

There are benefits-and some drawbacks-to maturity:

Now that the Beatles' music is growing more complex and challenging, they are losing some younger fans. Teenyboppers, most of whom would rather shriek up than freak out, are turning off at A Day in the Life, doubling back through Strawberry Fields and returning to predictably cute 1964-model Beatles—in the form of such blatantly aping groups as the Monkees.

On the other hand, the youngsters who were the original Beatlemaniacs are themselves older now, and dig the Beatles on a less hysterical level. Two years ago, Kathy Dreyfuss of Los Angeles went on a pilgrimage to the Beatles' home town of Liverpool with her mother. "I was such a screaming fan I couldn't eat or sleep," says Kathy, looking back from the very earnest vantage point of 16. "I realize now I was submerging all my problems in the Beatles. I still like them, but it isn't such a madness. Now their songs are about the things I think about—the world, love, drugs, the way things are."

In exchange for the teenyboppers, the new Beatles have captivated a different and much more responsive audience. "Suddenly," says George Harrison, "we find that all the people who thought they were beyond the Beatles are fans."

Ironically, though, while the Beatles and their fans seem to be growing up, the kids seem to be getting left behind in all the newfound artistic seriousness. Is it any wonder even the Monkees are having million-selling records? At least they're still about having fun.

Obama Derangement Syndrome

David Weigel at The Best Magazine in the World on debunking the latest Obama rumors.

Jim Geraghty, who did some mighty fine debunking of the "whitey tape" smear (which was mentioned by Maureen Dowd today: Mazel tov, Larry Johnson!), started the ball rolling.

There are several (unlikely) rumors circulating regarding Obama’s birth certificate.

Rumor One: Obama was born in Kenya.

Rumor Two: Obama’s middle name is not “Hussein” but “Muhammad.”

Rumor Three: His mother did not want to name him after his father, and his birth certificate says “Barry.”

Geraghty lists them, I think, in descending orders of risibility. Obama couldn't have been born in Kenya because there is no record of 23-year old Barack Hussein Obama Sr. and 18-year old Ann Dunham travelling there in 1961. They were college students who conceived their son (am I really writing this?) in a dorm and moved to a house off campus when their kid was born. Obama Sr. had a wife he abandoned in Kenya, so I'm not sure why he would have rushed back. The Obama family story, corroborated by everyone who knew them, is that the parents lived in Hawaii for two years until father bolted to study at Harvard.

Of course, this won't stop the folks suffering from severe ODS:

Nonetheless, here's the best stuff from a fever-swampy (400 comment!) HotAir thread:

There’s more to this story regarding a bunch of trips that Obama’s mother undertook from Hawaii to the Philippines when he was little, and why. It also has something to do with birth, citizenship, clarification of the entire record. Hillary is wainting in the wings. Get ready for Hillary/McCain.


*Smacks forehead* Of course! Hillary suspended her campaign because she knew reporters would dig up proof of Obama's Kenyan citizenship, after which she could swoop in and take the nomination via tomfoolery, destroying the hopes of the party's loyal black base without which no Democrat can win! It's obvious, really.

The best theory on the "Muhammad" rumor comes from the same thread from—wait for it—Eric Dondero.
At the time that Obama could have changed his name from Muhammed to Hussein, Saddam Hussein didn’t have the huge negative connotations that it does now. Remember, back in the 1980s, Hussein was almost an ally of the US, particularly right after the Iranian Hostage Crisis.

(I served in Reagan’s Navy back then, including two tours in the Persian Gulf at the time, right at the height of the Iraq/Iran War.)

Proof! But there are some problems here. For starters, Obama Sr. was not a practicing Muslim was his son was born. He was an atheist. Why he'd name his son after the prophet when he believed the prophet was a bullshit salesman, I have no idea. There's also the problem that while Hawaii's birth certificates aren't public, there are records of "Barack Hussein Obama, Jr." at his various schools in Indonesia and Hawaii... before the period when Eric Dondero, P.I. theorized that he decided to change his name.

Well, keep trying anyway, guys. The crazier you are, the more electable he becomes.

The Good Fast Days

People like to talk about the slower pace of life when they were younger. But that also had a down side.

Americans have had it so good, for so long, that they seem to have forgotten what government's heavy hand does to living standards and economic growth. But the same technological innovation that is causing all this dislocation and anxiety has also created an information network that is as near to real-time as the world has ever experienced.

For example, President Bush put steel tariffs in place in March 2002. Less than two years later, in December 2003, he rescinded them. This is something most politicians don't do. But because the tariffs caused such a sharp rise in the price of steel, small and mid-size businesses complained loudly. The unintended consequences became visible to most American's very quickly.

Decades ago the feedback mechanism was slow. The unintended consequences of the New Deal took too long to show up in the economy. As a result, by the time the pain was publicized, the connection to misguided government policy could not be made. Today, in the midst of Internet Time, this is no longer a problem. So, despite protestations from staff at the White House, most people understand that food riots in foreign lands and higher prices at U.S. grocery stores are linked to ethanol subsidies in the U.S., which have sent shock waves through the global system.

This is the good news. Policy mistakes will be ferreted out very quickly. As a result, any politician who attempts to change things will be blamed for the unintended consequences right away.

This is why dictatorships are so scared of the Internet. Once people have a faster way of finding out what their government is up to, it's harder for that government to ignore their complaints.

Excorcist '08: The Veep

Bobby Jindal, demon hunter!

We've discovered that in an essay Jindal wrote in 1994 for the New Oxford Review, a serious right-wing Catholic journal, Jindal narrated a bizarre story of a personal encounter with a demon, in which he participated in an exorcism with a group of college friends. And not only did they cast out the supernatural spirit that had possessed his friend, Jindal wrote that he believes that their ritual may well have cured her cancer.

Reading the article leaves no doubt that Jindal -- who graduated from Brown University in 1991, was a Rhodes Scholar, and had been accepted at Yale Law School and Harvard Medical School when he wrote the essay -- was completely serious about the encounter. He even said the experience 'reaffirmed' his faith.

Well, at the very least, Jindal could actually claim a special relationship with God if he ever became President.

A Spoonful Of Caffeine

Not everything that's addictive is bad for you.

Recall from memory may be improved by caffeine (here and here), possibly due to enhancements in memory encoding rather than retrieval per se. Another study shows caffeine can actually impair estimates of 'memory scanning' speed (in the Sternberg paradigm), so the failure of many studies to find recall-related effects of caffeine may reflect a speed-accuracy tradeoff at the time of retrieval.

(snip)

The beneficial effects of caffeine may be most pronounced in conjunction with sugar. For example, one factor analytic study has shown caffeine-glucose cocktails provide benefits to cognition not seen with either alone.

I knew it was good for something other than keeping me up all night.

A Tale Of Two Blogs

Messy Vs. Neat. First, the neat:

If there's one phrase to describe Obama's blog--and, in fact, his entire Internet operation--it's 'a means to an end'; Obama may benefit from unprecedented online enthusiasm--four to eight million email addresses, 1.5 million donors, 800,000 registered users of my.barackobama.com, his social networking platform, and hundreds of commenters on every post--but his team's greatest innovation has been its relentless focus on converting that energy into favorable offline outcomes: registration drives, caucus turnout, et cetera. As a result, Obama's blog is about as interesting as a Club Med brochure.

Now, the messy:

The McCain Report, on the other hand, is actually readable. Written by new hire Michael Goldfarb (formerly a blogger at the Weekly Standard), the Report wouldn't seem out of place on any number of smart, substantive conservative websites; it just happens to be an official production. Since launching the blog on Friday, Goldfarb has advanced an interesting (if debatable) argument about how increased taxes won't lead to increased government revenue; characterized Obama's early opposition to the Iraq war as a matter of political convenience rather than bold leadership; and reminded readers that Obama wasn't always opposed to the Bear Stearns bailout. He's even tried a little--gasp!--humor.

So what's wrong with being a little disorganized? Because it's apparently no way to win:

The important thing here is that this human tone and human scale isn't limited to McCain's blog--it's reflected throughout the campaign. Obama's venue of choice? A 25,000-seat stadium. In contrast, McCain prefers the push and pull of a town-hall meeting--and has, in fact, challenged Obama to join him on stage. While a fixed, frictionless inner circle of aides runs Obama's massive, efficient organization like a successful private corporation, McCain is relying on a decentralized network of 11 "regional campaign managers" stationed in places like New Brunswick, N.J. and Royal Oak, Mich. to handle his affairs. Obama has 700 staffers blanketing nearly the entire nation; McCain employs only 250. Finally, McCain still invites reporters to cycle on and off his bus for face time and interviews, and top aide Mark Salter regularly responds to unfavorable reports with lengthy personal letters--unlike Obama, who interacts with the media only when necessary. "That's not how you win an election!" a McCain associate recently told Time. "McCain is about the only person left who thinks we ought to keep the bus going. Obama keeps the press at a distance. Why? Because he's trying to win!"

And that's precisely McCain's problem: while the Obama campaign is even bigger and savvier than George W. Bush's legendary presidential juggernauts, Team McCain is still stuck in its default mode: scrappy insurgent.

An insurgent campaign isn't supposed to act like an insurgent campaign once the candidate comes out on top. John McCain should make it clear to voters that's where he wants to be if he expects them to pick him over the new kid.

Silence In Volumes

I've been wondering this myself.

By his silence about what is happening in Zimbabwe, Mandela is making himself complicit in the pillage and murder of an entire nation, as well as the strangulation of an important African democracy. I recently had the chance to speak to George Bizos, the heroic South African attorney who was Mandela's lawyer in the bad old days and who more recently has also represented Morgan Tsvangirai, the much-persecuted leader of the Zimbabwean opposition. Why, I asked him, was his old comrade apparently toeing the scandalous line taken by President Thabo Mbeki and the African National Congress? Bizos gave me one answer that made me wince—that Mandela is now a very old man—and another that made me wince again: that his doctors have advised him to avoid anything stressful. One has a bit more respect for the old lion than to imagine that he doesn't know what's happening in next-door Zimbabwe or to believe that he doesn't understand what a huge difference the smallest word from him would make. It will be something of a tragedy if he ends his career on a note of such squalid compromise.

I guess commenting on black-on-black oppression could be seen as "Stressful" to certain people.

Bloggin' In The Years: 1940

Congress applauds Roosevelt's speech on German treachery. Full text and audio here. The war keeps spreading whether we like it or not.

Speaking of which: Canada declares war on Mussolini while Norway surrenders; is Paris next?

A Nice Place To Visit

Now this is what I would call extreme tourism:

Mount Kumgang, Kumgangsan Tourist Region
Location: North Korea’s east coast

Why you should go: It’s an unspoiled spiritual retreat. Mount Kumgang and the surrounding area feature exquisite natural beauty, a famous Zen monastery, and challenging trails for hiking enthusiasts. Nearby Kuryong Falls plunges 242 feet before crashing into a series of lagoons below. A pavilion allows easy viewing of the falls, and mountain paths take travelers more than 5,000 feet up for a stunning panoramic view of the surrounding valleys and the white-sand beaches of the Korean coastline. Enjoy the latter while you can, as electric and barbed-wire fences make access to these beaches rather difficult.

Why you can’t: Because it’s almost impossible. Americans can acquire visas for North Korea, but the only access points are through China and South Korea. Tony Poe, a travel agent based in Little Rock, Arkansas, says that although the North Korean regime has begun to allow U.S. tour groups entry, “you’re basically under quarantine” the entire time. American tourists (of which there have been fewer than 500 since the Korean War ended in 1953) are generally restricted to Pyongyang and the surrounding areas, with Kumgangsan essentially off limits. Straying too far from the tour group is strictly forbidden, and the nonexistent U.S. Embassy and Consulate aren’t going to be of much help if you get into trouble with the Stalinist regime’s notorious secret police.

Even the ugliest regimes in the world have some beautiful vacation spots. Too bad they're too paranoid to let anyone go there.

Thou Shall Not Cheer

Meet the cheering police.

Six people at Fort Mill High School's graduation were charged Saturday and a seventh at the graduation for York Comprehensive High School was charged Friday with disorderly conduct, authorities said. Police said the seven yelled after students' names were called.

'I just thought they were going to escort me out,' Jonathan Orr told The Herald of Rock Hill. 'I had no idea they were going to put handcuffs on me and take me to jail.'

Orr, 21, spent two hours in jail after he was arrested when he yelled for his cousin at York's commencement at the Winthrop University Coliseum.

Rock Hill police began patrolling commencements several years ago at the request of school districts who complained of increasing disruption. Those attending graduations are told they can be prosecuted for bad behavior and letters are sent home with students, said Rock Hill police spokesman Lt. Jerry Waldrop.

All the cases, except for one that includes a resisting arrest charge, will be handled in city court and are punishable by a maximum of 30 days in jail and a $1,000 fine.
Orr said he thinks people should be allowed to cheer.

'For some people, it might be the only member of their family to graduate high school, and it was like a funeral in there,' Orr said.

A thousand bucks for cheering? What, no local speed traps?

Eat The Rich

Punish the wealthy! Barack Obama? No, it's the other guy:

In times of hardship and distress, we should be more vigilant than ever in holding corporate abuses to account, as in the case of the housing market. Americans are right to be offended when the extravagant salaries and severance deals of CEO's -- in some cases, the very same CEO's who helped to bring on these market troubles -- bear no relation to the success of the company or the wishes of shareholders. Something is seriously wrong when the American people are left to bear the consequences of reckless corporate conduct, while the offenders themselves are packed off with another forty - or fifty million for the road.

If I am elected president, I intend to see that wrongdoing of this kind is called to account by federal prosecutors. And under my reforms, all aspects of a CEO's pay, including any severance arrangements, must be approved by shareholders.

This from a guy who's worth about $100 million and who built his own lake to prettify his property. And the difference between him and Obama is?

Not Too Swift

John McCain versus the Paulites?

...there is a hateful piece of garbage on Youtube--which revisits, in its last minute, the same slanderous nonsense about John McCain's time as a prisoner of war that the Bush campaign helped spread through South Carolina in 2000. It wouldn't be worth commenting on but for the provenance. It was made, apparently, by a Ron Paul supporter. This raises the question of just how virulent the Libertarians will be in the coming election. Both Paul and Bob Barr, the Libertarian candidate for President should condemn this immediately and do what they can to re-educate the jerk who made it.

Agreed. Part of Paul's problem was that he didn't denounce the neo-Nazi wingnuts quickly enough. I would hope that Bob Barr will be better at getting out in front of this kind of garbage.

Revenge Of The Nerd

Could Bobby Jindal be the first nerd president?

Just one year above the constitutional age minimum for the presidency, he has already held six government jobs, in addition to earning a master's degree and working as a management consultant.

In a state that has long led the nation in production of political vignettes, Jindal is as notable for what he has failed to generate: colorful anecdotes.

'There aren't a lot of good Jindal stories. The characters we've had - he's a total break with all that,' said Roy Fletcher, a local strategist. 'He has the blandness that comes with technocracy.'

Considering we've already had sixteen years of a playboy and a frat boy, respectively, maybe going bland wouldn't be so bad.

The Global Idea Factory

Pat Buchanan won't like this:

Trade advocates focus on the benefits of goods arriving from abroad, like luxury shoes from Italy or computer chips from Taiwan. But new ideas are the real prize. By 2010, China will have more Ph.D. scientists and engineers than the United States. These professionals are not fundamentally a threat. To the contrary, they are creators, whose ideas are likely to improve the lives of ordinary Americans, not just the business elites. The more access the Chinese have to American and other markets, the more they can afford higher education and the greater their incentive to innovate.

Conservative and liberal economists agree that new ideas are the fundamental source of higher living standards. We urgently need new biotechnologies, a cure for AIDS and a cleaner energy infrastructure, to name just a few. Trade is part of the path toward achieving those ends. A wealthier China and India also mean higher potential rewards for Americans and others who invest in innovation. A product or idea that might have been marketed just to the United States and to Europe 20 years ago could be sold to billions more in the future.

The days of economic isolation are over. John McCain understands this. For all his protectionst talk during the primaries, I think Barack Obama does, too. The Invisible Hand continues to move of its own accord.

Finding His Inner Conservative

Is he actually not as liberal as the Republican Party would have voters believe?

Obama insists his views are more complicated than simple labels convey. But while McCain has often defied his own party's orthodoxy, Obama has declined to do so.

As liberals go, however, opponents of Big Government could do worse. On economic matters, like the mortgage crisis, he's more respectful of property rights and free markets than, say, Clinton. His health-care plan rankles many liberals because it doesn't force everyone to buy insurance.

While Obama has criticized various free-trade agreements, he's also written that in today's world, 'it's hard to even imagine, much less enforce, an effective regime of protectionism.'

A liberal conservative? Sounds too much like an oxymoron. Maybe "Liberal inependent" would be a better description, and Obama would do well to identify himself as one.

Know Who Your Friends Are

Fundamentalist lunacy-it's not just for the fringe crowd anymore. Via Andrew Sullivan:

If you thought that the crackpot extremism of Rod Parsley and John Hagee are fringe phenomena, Gary Bauer, concerned that McCain has now been forced to diss both, will set you straight:

'Those are both very influential men and it will just make things more challenging to accomplish between now and November.'

Hagee believes that the Holocaust was part of God's plan to create Israel. Bauer is one of Bill Kristol's best friends.

It will take a long time to get this poison out of the GOP's system.

Evidence? What Evidence?

It doesn't help the military's case that they don't do th torture thing when they try to get rid of the evidence:

US interrogators of 'war on terror' detainees were instructed to destroy handwritten notes that might have exposed harsh or even illegal questioning methods at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, a lawyer for one of the prisoners said Sunday.

Navy Lieutenant Commander Bill Kuebler said in a statement sent to reporters he considers the notes crucial to the defense of his client, Canadian Omar Khadr, during his upcoming murder trial by a special military tribunal at the US naval base.

Kuebler said the instructions were handed down to interrogators from the US Department of Defense as part of a standard operating procedure or 'SOP' directive that he obtained from prosecutors last week.

If they were carried out, US interrogators may have 'routinely destroyed evidence' that might have been used to defend the Khadr and other detainees, Kuebler charged.

'If handwritten notes were destroyed in accordance with the SOP, the government intentionally deprived Omar's lawyers of key evidence with which to challenge the reliability' of alleged confessions made to military interrogators, Kuebler said.

He cited in particular one passage of the directive to military interrogators stating that 'this mission has legal and political issues that may lead to interrogators being called to testify.'

'Keeping the number of documents with interrogation information to a minimum can minimize certain legal issues,' the policy statement said, according to Kuebler.

It's like they were property clerks for a corrupt police department. Oh, wait...

Peace Through Soft Power

I don't think most people in this country have fully appreciated the impact that Obama's nomination is having on the rest of the world. Case in point:

Obamania has gripped most of Europe. But the enthusiasm is particularly striking in France. This is where the disenchantment with U.S. foreign policy under the Bush administration has been the most vocal. And this is where the Continent's largest community of African immigrants and their descendants live.

From the philosopher Bernard Henri-Lévy to disenfranchised teenagers in volatile suburbs, Barack Obama - the 46-year-old Democratic senator from Illinois who is about to become the first black presidential nominee of a major U.S. party - has struck a nerve.

"He inspires different people for different reasons, but he inspires most people," said Solvit, whose 2,000-person-strong committee is the biggest in Europe and includes prominent members like Axel Poniatowski, president of the foreign affairs commission at the National Assembly, and Mayor Bertrand Delanoë of Paris.

"For the French establishment, Obama represents a new chapter in the Western alliance," Solvit said. "For ethnic minorities he embodies the equality of opportunity they crave."

(snip)

In no other segment of France's population does this ideal inspire more than among minorities. One in 10 of the nation's inhabitants is of Arab or African origin.

Kama Des-Gachons, a 28-year-old Frenchwoman, was one of about 600 young men and women flocking to a panel discussion in Paris on Tuesday about the 'Obama Effect in France.' Her eyes lit up when she spoke about Obama. Not because he is a Democrat or because he opposed to the war in Iraq. But because his father was an African immigrant, like hers.

"He makes me dream," said Des-Gachons, whose parents came to France from Mali. "I even bought a T-shirt with the American flag. America is the country where you can make it."

It would be nice to have a President who could make Americans popular overseas again.

You Gotta Have Faith

Via Andrew Sullivan, why science and religion can get along:

The truth of the matter is that religion and science are not competitors, but fundamentally different responses to the human situation. Religion begins where science leaves off. Theories of how humanity or the universe came about are strictly beside the point. Claiming to have a better explanation of the natural world than orthodox science - as creationists do - does nothing to advance the cause of faith.

Religion expresses the human need for meaning, not a demand for explanation. For those who have it, faith entails understanding the limits of the human mind and an acceptance of mystery. Even if all the problems of science are some day solved, humans will still be searching for purpose in their lives, and for that reason alone they will need religion.

I would add that we don't necessarily need religion, which is a manmade institution, but humans will no doubt always be asking the question of why we are here and what our ultimate purpose is. To find the answers beyond science sometimes does require a leap of faith. (And I'm a skeptic).

The Maple Leaf Thought Police

The strange saga of Canada's human rights court continues:

University of B.C. journalism professor Stephen Ward said in an interview that as Canada becomes more pluralistic, there will be more challenges alleging some publications are discriminatory.

'We have to find a way to avoid these legalistic attempts to try and keep the media accountable in some way,' said Ward. 'The wrong answer is to go to a human rights commission. It threatens to put a chill on journalism.'

In April, the Ontario Human Rights Commission said it could not hear the CIC's complaint because Ontario's code doesn't cover magazines. The B.C. Human Rights Code does cover publications.

'I'm not happy to be here,' said Toronto lawyer Julian Porter, who is representing Maclean's. 'We're not entitled under the law the way it's structured to plead truth, fair comment, qualified privilege or intent or standards of journalism.'

Porter said that in the Supreme Court of Canada, truth or fair comment is a defence, but that test doesn't apply with the human rights tribunal.

Human rights commissions and tribunals were set up decades ago to deal with discrimination over access of services in housing or employment.

At the start, opponents of such tribunals were what criminologist John Miller called 'wing nuts, the white supremacists or fundamental Christians.'

No one had much sympathy for them when they complained about the tribunals. Now that Maclean's is targeted, the debate has flowed into larger, broader issues of constitutional rights of freedom of expression, Miller said.

The threat of censorship in a supposedly free society can have a tendency to do that.

Wither The Neocons?

For Bill Krystol and other neocons, 2008 may not be so much about beating Obama as it is about keeping their agenda alive. But how can they?

Campaigning on xenophobia, guilt by association, and red-baiting has desperate and unintentionally self-parodic qualities this year that it didn't have as recently as 2004. The likelihood is that John McCain will lose; if and when he loses, the multilateral truce among neos, paleos, reformists, and GOP hacks --- which is about as fragile as the truce in Basra to begin with --- is going to shatter before Obama's victory speech ends.

The neocons are in a decidedly weak position. Fairly or not, it's their foreign policy more than anything else that has made the name of the GOP radioactive --- and even worse for Republican partisans, has destroyed the party's nearly 40-year-old, frequently decisive advantage on national security. And though the Republicans somehow stumbled into nominating their only candidate with a prayer of victory, they exposed the neocons to even more risk by choosing, in John McCain, the most prominent exponent of their philosophy in American politics.

McCain is at heart not a neocon, and for all his faults he represents the clearest break with neocon policy in the Republican Party. The question for him is, how much of a Republican Party will he have left if he returns to being its leader in the Senate?

Salvation By Singularity

Is it just a subsitute for religion?

Let's face it. The singularity is a religious rather than a scientific vision. The science-fiction writer Ken MacLeod has dubbed it “the rapture for nerds,” an allusion to the end-time, when Jesus whisks the faithful to heaven and leaves us sinners behind.

Such yearning for transcendence, whether spiritual or technological, is all too understandable. Both as individuals and as a species, we face deadly serious problems, including terrorism, nuclear proliferation, overpopulation, poverty, famine, environmental degradation, climate change, resource depletion, and AIDS. Engineers and scientists should be helping us face the world's problems and find solutions to them, rather than indulging in escapist, pseudoscientific fantasies like the singularity.

Well, who says science and religion can't get along?

She's Gone

The Wicked Witch is dead.

WASHINGTON (AP) - Hillary Rodham Clinton ended her historic campaign for the presidency on Saturday and told supporters to unite behind rival Barack Obama, closing out a race that was as grueling as it was groundbreaking.

The former first lady, who as recently as Tuesday declared herself the strongest candidate, gave Obama an unqualified endorsement and pivoted from her role as determined foe to absolute ally.

'The way to continue our fight now to accomplish the goals for which we stand is to take our energy, our passion, our strength and do all we can to help elect Barack Obama, the next president of the United States,' she said in a speech before cheering supporters packed into the ornate National Building Museum, not far from the White House she longed to govern from.

'Today as I suspend my campaign, I congratulate him on the victory he has won and the extraordinary race he has run. I endorse him and throw my full support behind him and I ask of you to join me in working as hard for Barack Obama as you have for me,' the New York senator said in her 28-minute address.

At the very last Bubba will no longer have to ponder the possibility of becoming First Man.

It's For The People

I'm sure Michael Moore will be pleased about this.

HAVANA — Cuba has authorized sex-change operations and will offer them free for qualifying citizens, an official said Friday.

The move is the latest in a series of changes implemented by President Raul Castro since he succeeded his elder brother, Fidel, in February. Raul Castro's daughter, Mariela, heads Cuba's National Center for Sex Education, which strongly backs the new policy.

Health Minister Jose Ramon Balaguer signed a resolution approving sex-change surgery, said an official at the center who spoke on condition of anonymity because the measure has not been formally published. The resolution will be posted on the Internet on Saturday, the official said.

The procedure would be available to Cubans for free as part of their country's health-care system.

But I'll bet they'd still prefer an American operation.

Carbon Free Chocolate

It's politically correct candy!

Marketed as the 'first taste of a lower-carbon lifestyle,' Bloomsberry donates 55 cents from each bar to TerraPass to pay for 133 pounds of carbon offsets, which is the average American's daily carbon impact.

'We've sold enough in the first quarter that it's comparable to taking 900 cars off the road for a year,' said Kerry Laramie, vice president sales and marketing for Bloomsberry's US division.

'That's 9.3 million pounds of carbon offsets.'

The bars, which were launched in the United States in January and may eventually be sold overseas, come at an opportune time: about 36 percent of US shoppers said in a recent survey that they regularly buy 'green' products, up from just 12 percent in 2006.

If they start selling fast food for carbon credits, expect Al Gore to stock up on cheeseburgers.

Bloggin' In The Years: 1900

It looks like an uphill battle for those seeking to deny William Jennings Bryan the Democratic nomination:

Sentiment appeared to be largely in favor of the project against which Mr. Hill was battling. Erie County had sent a deleqation that had been instructed in the most positive way for Bryan and the platform of 1896, and its members conducted a propaganda among their fellow-delegates, many of whom had received similar instructions. On the face of it, the gathering was so apparently committed that even the most sanguine supporters of Mr. Hill felt that they had a task of unusual difficulty ahead of them.

That often seems to be the case with Democrats these days.

Will the Navy take action in China? (I'd like to know how President Bryan would handle this).

Stephen Crane is dead at age thirty.

Crime Pays

Being indicted doesn't mean you can't still get paid.

The US military has awarded an $80 million contract to a prominent Saudi financier who has been indicted by the US Justice Department. The contract to supply jet fuel to American bases in Afghanistan was awarded to the Attock Refinery Ltd, a Pakistani-based refinery owned by Gaith Pharaon. Pharaon is wanted in connection with his alleged role at the failed Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), and the CenTrust savings and loan scandal, which cost US tax payers $1.7 billion.

(ABC News Photo Illustration)The Saudi businessman was also named in a 2002 French parliamentary report as having links to informal money transfer networks called hawala, known to be used by traders and terrorists, including Al Qaeda.

(snip)

A spokesman for the FBI said Pharaon was not wanted in connection with the French report, but confirmed he was still sought by the US Justice Department.

"Ghaith Pharaon is an FBI fugitive indicted in both the BCCI and CENTRUST case," said Richard Kolko, a spokesman for the FBI. "If anyone has information on his location, they are requested to contact the FBI or the US Embassy."

Well, that's the cost of doing business.

Do You Feel Lucky, Punk?

Clint Eastwoodfires back at Spike Lee.

Eastwood has no time for Lee's gripes. 'He was complaining when I did Bird [the 1988 biopic of Charlie Parker]. Why would a white guy be doing that? I was the only guy who made it, that's why. He could have gone ahead and made it. Instead he was making something else.' As for Flags of Our Fathers, he says, yes, there was a small detachment of black troops on Iwo Jima as a part of a munitions company, 'but they didn't raise the flag. The story is Flags of Our Fathers, the famous flag-raising picture, and they didn't do that. If I go ahead and put an African-American actor in there, people'd go, 'This guy's lost his mind.' I mean, it's not accurate.'

Lee shouldn't be demanding African-Americans in Eastwood's next picture, either. Changeling is set in Los Angeles during the Depression, before the city's make-up was changed by the large black influx. 'What are you going to do, you gonna tell a fuckin' story about that?' he growls. 'Make it look like a commercial for an equal opportunity player? I'm not in that game. I'm playing it the way I read it historically, and that's the way it is. When I do a picture and it's 90% black, like Bird, I use 90% black people.'
Eastwood pauses, deliberately - once it would have provided him with the beat in which to spit out his cheroot before flinging back his poncho - and offers a last word of advice to the most influential black director in American movies. 'A guy like him should shut his face.'

Not while he can make money playing the victim card, right, Spike?

Old L.U.

The Best Magazine in the World looks at a University dedicated to libertarianism.

Welcome to Guatemala's Libertarian U. Ayau opened the college in 1972, fed up with what he viewed as the "socialist" instruction being imparted at San Carlos University of Guatemala, the nation's largest institution of higher learning. He named the new school for a colonial-era priest who worked to liberate native Guatemalans from exploitation by Spanish overlords.

[..]

[Ayau] picked up a pamphlet by Ludwig von Mises, a member of the so-called Austrian School of economics. Considered one of the fathers of modern libertarianism, Mises abhorred state intervention in the economy. He believed that open markets, individual choice, private property and the rule of law were the means to a prosperous society.

Something clicked. Ayau read everything he could find by Mises, Friedrich Hayek and other Austrian School economists. He started a small discussion group among some Guatemalan friends and eventually traveled to New York to attend lectures at the Foundation for Economic Education, a free-market think tank. Through contacts there he met Mises and others whose works he'd been reading. At Ayau's urging, several traveled to Guatemala to speak to his tiny band of free marketeers, who by now were calling themselves the Center for Economic and Social Studies.

John Stossel, co-anchor of ABC News' "20/20," was honored this year on campus, as much for his ideology as his Emmy awards. An avowed libertarian, Stossel got a warm reception for his discourse against government regulation.

"We celebrate the message that this university teaches because economic freedom makes everybody's life better," Stossel said to rousing applause.

[...]

There are no sports teams and no affirmative action in hiring or admissions. Instructors can forget about tenure; there is none. Ditto for the protests and sit-ins that are common in public universities in Latin America. If Francisco Marroquin students are unhappy with the product they're getting, they're free to take their business elsewhere.

"If you don't like Macy's, you go to Gimbels," Ayau said.

Not all institutions of higher learning are for hippies.

How To Lose A Nuke

It's not quite the same as losing your car keys.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates ousted the Air Force's top military and civilian leaders Thursday, holding them to account in a historic Pentagon shake-up after embarrassing nuclear mix-ups.

Gates announced at a news conference that he had accepted the resignations of Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Michael Moseley and Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne - a highly unusual double firing.

Gates said his decision was based mainly on the damning conclusions of an internal report on the mistaken shipment to Taiwan of four Air Force electrical fuses for ballistic missile warheads. And he linked the underlying causes of that slip-up to another startling incident: the flight last August of a B-52 bomber that was mistakenly armed with six nuclear-tipped cruise missiles.

The report drew the stunning conclusion that the Air Force's nuclear standards have been in a long decline, a 'problem that has been identified but not effectively addressed for over a decade.'

But hey, at least they've still got the Stargate!

Bloggin' In The Years: 1968

Welcome to the weird world of Andy Warhol.

Leaders pay tribute to Robert Kennedy. Plus: was Kennedy a victim of the war of words?

Race, Viet Nam, crime— all lend themselves to verbal overkill, not so much by candidates as by extremists: the John Birchers, the Rap Browns, the most ardent war critics, the Ku Kluxers. The evidence is everywhere. In Dallas, Assistant District Attorney William Alexander snarls on a TV show: "Earl Warren shouldn't be impeached—he should be hanged." Cries Rap Brown: "How many whites did you kill today?" Lyndon Johnson is routinely excoriated as a mass murderer. Robert Kennedy was branded by San Francisco hippies as a "fascist pig." Eventually verbal assassination becomes physical assassination.

Granted there's a lot of anger out there, but in the end once again it was one nutcase, not an entire society.

"Vhere Are Your Papers?"

The consequences of life without the Second Amendment:

WASHINGTON (Map, News) -
D.C. police will seal off entire neighborhoods, set up checkpoints and kick out strangers under a new program that D.C. officials hope will help them rescue the city from its out-of-control violence.

Under an executive order expected to be announced today, police Chief Cathy L. Lanier will have the authority to designate “Neighborhood Safety Zones.” At least six officers will man cordons around those zones and demand identification from people coming in and out of them. Anyone who doesn’t live there, work there or have “legitimate reason” to be there will be sent away or face arrest, documents obtained by The Examiner show.

Lanier has been struggling to reverse D.C.’s spiraling crime rate but has been forced by public outcry to scale back several initiatives including her “All Hands on Deck” weekends and plans for warrantless, door-to-door searches for drugs and guns.

Under today’s proposal, the no-go zones will last up to 10 days, according to internal police documents. Front-line officers are already being signed up for training on running the blue curtains.

Of course D.C.'s handgun ban wouldn't have had anything to do with said crime rate, would it?

Sometimes A Camera Is Just A Camera

On why the government shouldn't take its cues from Hollywood:

A movie-plot threat is a specific threat, vivid in our minds like the plot of a movie. You remember them from the months after the 9/11 attacks: anthrax spread from crop dusters, a contaminated milk supply, terrorist scuba divers armed with almanacs. Our imaginations run wild with detailed and specific threats, from the news, and from actual movies and television shows. These movie plots resonate in our minds and in the minds of others we talk to. And many of us get scared.

Terrorists taking pictures is a quintessential detail in any good movie. Of course it makes sense that terrorists will take pictures of their targets. They have to do reconnaissance, don't they? We need 45 minutes of television action before the actual terrorist attack -- 90 minutes if it's a movie -- and a photography scene is just perfect. It's our movie-plot terrorists that are photographers, even if the real-world ones are not.

The problem with movie-plot security is it only works if we guess the plot correctly. If we spend a zillion dollars defending Wimbledon and terrorists blow up a different sporting event, that's money wasted. If we post guards all over the Underground and terrorists bomb a crowded shopping area, that's also a waste. If we teach everyone to be alert for photographers, and terrorists don't take photographs, we've wasted money and effort, and taught people to fear something they shouldn't.

And even if terrorists did photograph their targets, the math doesn't make sense. Billions of photographs are taken by honest people every year, 50 billion by amateurs alone in the US And the national monuments you imagine terrorists taking photographs of are the same ones tourists like to take pictures of. If you see someone taking one of those photographs, the odds are infinitesimal that he's a terrorist.

But it does give the government a great excuse for expanded surveillance (funny how they can have cameras everywhere but the average law-abiding citizen can't, isn't it?)

Earn More, Pray Less

A work ethic for Muslim fundamentalists?

For Egyptian-born Muslim cleric and television host, Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, there is a simple answer to Egypt's productivity problem -- pray less, work more.

'Praying is a good thing ... 10 minutes should be enough,' Al-Jazeera television personality Qaradawi says in a religious edict, or fatwa, published on his website.

Praying five times a day is one of the five pillars of Islam, along with the well-known requirements of making a pilgrimage to Mecca and of giving alms to the poor."

(snip)

Qaradawi's plea to reconcile faith and productivity may hit some hurdles as it risks upsetting the deeply entrenched custom of "prayer breaks" at work.

Society's increased Islamisation over the past 30 years has already silenced some critics of long prayer sessions.

According to an official study, Egypt's six million government employees are estimated to spend an average of only 27 minutes per day actually working, reflecting a real problem with productivity.

In America we call people like this slackers.

An Occupation Of None

Speaking of polls, it appears Americans are not in the mood for a hundred-year stint in Mesopotamia:

Americans would like U.S. troops to come home from Iraq sooner rather than later. 42 percent are willing to have U.S troops remain in Iraq for only a year or less. 21 percent say troops should stay for one to two years more, while 30 percent are willing to keep troops in Iraq longer than two years.

We're leaving. It's only a question of how quickly. McCain knows this, even if he doesn't seem to want to admit it as of yet.

The Turning Tide

More bad news for fundamentalists:

Six in 10 Americans say the government should not regulate whether gays and lesbians can marry the people they choose, a survey finds.

As same-sex couples line up to get marriage licenses in California on June 17, the USA TODAY/Gallup Poll found that 63% of adults say same-sex marriage is 'strictly a private decision' between two people.

That the government has the right 'to prohibit or allow' such marriages was stated by 33%, and 4% had no opinion.

Yet another sign that the worst attitudes of the Bush Era seem to be fading.

The Bottom Line

Bainbridge on She We No Longer Await:

A lot of us were just plain tired of the Clintons: Their baggage, their smug paternalism, their sense of entitlement, their attitude that the rules don’t apply to them, and all the rest.

They obviously still feel that way about themselves. Self-delusion is a hard habit to break.

The Mugabe Method

I'll bet Hillary is wishing she could do this.

A convoy carrying the Movement for Democratic Change leader was stopped at a police roadblock at 1000 GMT, party spokesman Nelson Chamisa said.
The MDC leader and his entourage were taken to a police station in the far west of the country, said Mr Chamisa.

'It appears they want to disrupt our campaign programme,' he said.

It comes as Zimbabwe prepares for a run-off election between Mr Tsvangirai and President Robert Mugabe on 27 June.

The US said the Mr Tsvangirai's detention was 'deeply disturbing', and the EU presidency, currently held by Slovenia, called for the opposition leader's immediate release.

'Illegal detention'

Mr Chamisa said police stopped Mr Tsvangirai and his officials while they were driving to a rally as part of his presidential campaign.

The entire group - including the party's vice-president, national chairman and security personnel - are currently being 'illegally detained' at the police charge office in Lupane, he said.

I'm sure Mugabe is going to ask for every vote to be counted.

Enter The General

An intriguing suggestion:

Who should Obama choose as a running mate? Obviously, Colin Powell. He fixes Obama's national security deficit, strengthens the Republican/independent appeal, and completes Obama's narrative about post-partisanship.

The fact that he would know ten different ways to kill a man would help keep the White House staff in line, too.

Family Affair

The family that steals together, does time together.

The brother, sister and niece of indicted Rep. William Jefferson (D-La.) were indicted themselves today for allegedly skimming hundreds of thousands of dollars from non-profit groups they controlled, according to the Associated Press.

'U.S. Attorney Jim Letten said the family members used several non-profit and for-profit companies to obtain grants designed to help pregnant teens, at-risk youths and others in need of assistance. They allegedly deposited some of the grant money into personal checking accounts and used it for personal expenses.' the AP reported.

'A federal grand jury indicted New Orleans tax assessor Betty Jefferson, her brother, Mose Jefferson, and her daughter, Angela Coleman, on charges that include federal program fraud, identity theft and conspiracy to commit money laundering.' Betty and Mose Jefferson potentially face hundreds of years of prison under the 30-count indictment.

I wonder if they had enough freezers to go around.

Rolling Up The Welcome Mat?

It looks like the hundred-year-occupation is out:

The Iraqi government Tuesday said it had a 'different vision' from the US over the deployment of American troops in the country beyond 2008 and vowed not to compromise national sovereignty.

Government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said the cabinet discussed the proposed Status of Forces Agreement which is scheduled to be concluded by next month and agreed that Iraq's national interests must be protected.

'A joint vision on this issue is yet to be achieved between the two sides, and ... the Iraqi side has a different vision, and it will not undercut or be negligent towards Iraqis' rights and sovereignty,' Dabbagh said.

Empire-building? Who, us?

Dinnerjacket Will Be Dissapointed

So much for appeasement:

'The danger from Iran is grave and real and my goal will be to eliminate this threat,' he said, adding loudly to add emphasis that he would 'everything' to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.

'The Iranian regime supports violent extremes. And challenges across the region. It pursues a nuclear capability that could spark a dangerous arms race,' he told AIPAC's annual meeting in Washington.

Calling for 'aggressive, principled diplomacy' to tackle the problem of the Islamic regime in Tehran, he also warned he would never take the military option off the table in guaranteeing US and Israeli security.

'As president of the United States, I would be willing to lead tough and principled diplomacy with the appropriate Iranian leader at a time and place of my choosing -- if, and only if -- it can advance the interests of the United States.'

But I thought he was going to just cave in to Iran! Talk radio told me so!

They'll Be Watching You

Paranoia makes a comeback in the Fatherland.

Despite strong criticism from the opposition and even its own coalition partners, Chancellor Angela Merkel's government agreed Wednesday to give Germany's police forces greater powers to monitor homes, telephones and private computers, maintaining that an enhanced reach would protect citizens from terrorist attacks.

But opposition parties and some Social Democrats who share power with Merkel's conservative bloc criticized the measures in the draft legislation, saying they would further erode privacy rights that they contend have already been undermined, after revelations of recent snooping operations conducted by Deutsche Telekom, one of the country's biggest companies.

Deutsche Telekom had for some time been monitoring calls of its employers, despite federal regulations on strict data protection.

The proposed legislation would for the first time give federal police officers the right to take preventive measures in cases of suspected terrorism.

The bill, for example, calls for video surveillance of private apartments, online computer searches and phone monitoring.

But the nature of the surveillance, which would require the approval of the Bundestag, the lower house of Parliament, has worried many Germans, with some commentators recalling the Nazi past and its vast machinery of spying. They also point to the more recent role of the Stasi, the hated secret police in the once Communist-ruled East Germany, which established a pervasive system of keeping tabs on almost everyone in the country.

Well, maybe Merkel is just being nostalgic...