Meet Osama Bin Laden's wayward niece, Wafah Dufour, no appearing in GQ magazine, accourting to Reuters.
Read more here.
Meet Osama Bin Laden's wayward niece, Wafah Dufour, no appearing in GQ magazine, accourting to Reuters.
Read more here.
One team of researchers compared 21 specimens of Atlantic Ocean blue hake preserved during the 1880s with 66 similar fish caught in the 1970s. They found no change at all in the concentration of mercury.In another study, Princeton scientists compared samples of yellowfin tuna from 1971 with samples caught in 1998. They expected to find a mercury increase of between 9 and 26 percent, but they found a small decline instead.And in a unique experiment, curators of the Smithsonian Institution tested tuna samples that were archived between 1878 and 1909, and compared them with similar fish tissue from 1971 and 1993. They found significantly less mercury in the more recently caught fish. In some cases, the difference was more than 50 percent.
Granted, I don't know who the first "team of researchers" is, but the others are credible. The site's good, check it out at at www.fishscam.com/mercur...
More evidence of pseudo-science alarmism in the environmental/animal rights/ State of Fear movement. Most telling is the mis/disinformation about mercury levels in seafood.
I'm sensing a move back to common sense, along with a healthy skepticism of social fearmongering. Hope it lasts.Read more at www.fishscam.com/
Even on vacation, Andrew is the best.
Read more at www.andrewsullivan.com/
Would Senators Sam Nunn, Pat Moynihan, Bob Kerrey, Chuck Robb, David Boren or Henry M. Jackson have conducted their opposition to President Bush's war policies in Iraq as have Senators Harry Reid, Richard Durbin, Ted Kennedy and Barbara Boxer? The former group stood for the idea of a loyal opposition; the latter stand simply in opposition.
Here is one man's view of why we are in Iraq: We are trying to democratize this country so they don't try to kill us. That Iraqis should "get their freedom" is genuinely good and desirable. But I wish President Bush would say more often that Iraqi democratization is in our raw self-interest. It doesn't much matter to me whether the country we democratize is Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia or Syria. The theory that democracies don't attack other democracies is as strong as such notions get, and what the world most needs now is a new, large Islamic democracy. A democracy, however "imperfect," is less likely than an authoritarian state to detonate a nuclear device in someone else's territory.
. . . Democrats, with their zest for gender politics, need this reminder: To give a woman a seat on a crowded bus because she is a woman is gallantry. To give a woman a seat on the Supreme Court because she is a woman is a dereliction of senatorial duty. It also is an affront to mature feminism, which may bridle at gallantry but should recoil from condescension.
As for Republicans, any who vote for Miers will thereafter be ineligible to argue that it is important to elect Republicans because they are conscientious conservers of the judicial branch's invaluable dignity. Finally, any Republican senator who supinely acquiesces in President Bush's reckless abuse of presidential discretion -- or who does not recognize the Miers nomination as such -- can never be considered presidential material.
After three weeks of spin and reporting, we still don't know much more about what Ms. Miers thinks of the Constitution. What we have learned is that the White House has presented her to the country, and thrown her into the buzz saw that is the U.S. Senate, without either proper preparation or vetting. The result has been a political melee that is hurting not just Ms. Miers, who deserves better. It is also damaging the White House and its prospects for a successful second term.
Instead of a fight over judicial philosophy, we're having a fight over one woman's credentials and background. Instead of debating the Kelo decision's evisceration of private property rights, we are destined to learn everything we never wanted to know about the Texas Lottery Commission.
Instead of dividing Red State Democrats from Senate liberals, the nomination is dividing Republicans. Pat Robertson is threatening retribution not against moderate Democrats but against GOP conservatives who dare to oppose Ms. Miers. Chuck Schumer couldn't have written a better script.
The plaintiffs argue that intelligent design--which posits that some aspects of life, yet unexplained by evolution, are best attributed to an unnamed and unseen intelligent designer--really is a disguised version of creationism, the adherence to the biblical account of creation.C'mon! If it isn't God, what else would it be? Space aliens (shades of Scientology)? A band of Angels? No, this is ultimately creationism in a lab coat. How this guy can call himself a scientist is beyond me.
Not so, said (Michael) Behe [the biochemist from Lehigh University], during often heated exchanges with counsel for the plaintiffs during cross-examination. Creationism is "180 degrees different from intelligent design," he said. "Creationism is a theological concept. Intelligent design is a scientific theory that relies on physical, empirical, observable evidence in nature plus logical inferences."
Behe, who identifies himself as a Roman Catholic, said that although intelligent design cannot scientifically identify the designer and does not rule out a natural cause, he believes it is God. Behe is the author of 1996's "Darwin's Black Box," a touchstone of the design movement.
On Thursday, in the city's well-to-do Lower Garden District, a neighborhood with many antebellum mansions, members of the Oklahoma National Guard seized weapons from the inhabitants of one home. Those who were armed were handcuffed and briefly detained before being let go.
"No one will be able to be armed. We are going to take all the weapons," Deputy Chief of Police Riley said.It seems to me that being able to defend one's home is exactly WHY we have the second amendment. Disarming law-abiding citizens in an area where looting is likely enables criminals and denies rights to the good guys. Arrest people who commit crimes, not those who are simply defending themselves in a situation where police are helpless.
"We must ... come to terms with the ugly truth that skin color, age and economics played a deadly role in who survived and who did not," Dean said.Howard Dean has always struck me, from the way he tosses out little jabs-as-fact during whatever media face-time he gets, as an unfunny smart-ass. The jerk who can't quite control his mouth. This, however, is race-baiting of the worst sort, untrue, inflammatory and what's more, cruel to the people it's supposedly designed to champion. Dean was, of course, speaking to a largely black audience. To tell people a lie like this is incredibly unfair and insulting to them, not to mention the fact that it simply fuels race hatred. Is this what Dean truly wants?
"We want our country back and, if we have to impeach everybody from George Bush down to the person who picks up dog s**t in Washington, we will impeach all those people."
What dreary sentimental nonsense this all is, and how much space has been wasted on it. Most irritating is the snide idea that the president is "on vacation" and thus idly ignoring his suffering subjects, when the truth is that the members of the media—not known for their immunity to the charm of Martha's Vineyard or Cape Cod in the month of August—are themselves lazing away the season with a soft-centered nonstory that practically, as we like to say in the trade, "writes itself." Anyway, Sheehan now says that if need be she will "follow" the president "to Washington," so I don't think the holiday sneer has much life left in it.
We're London, and we've got our own way of doing things, and it doesn't involve tossing bombs around where innocent people are going about their lives. And that's because we're better than you. Everyone is better than you. Our city works. We rather like it. And we're going to go about our lives. We're going to take care of the lives you ruined. And then we're going to work. And we're going down the pub.Everyone is better than the terrorists. ANYone is better than people who are so impotent all they can really do is hurt people and knock things down. Long live London. (Referred by Andrew S.)
Chinese Censors Scold Internet Users Who Input Taboo Words, Like 'Freedom' and 'Human Rights'I think MS should not be cooperating with this obvious attack on basic human rights, benefits of trading in China be damned. This kind of cooperation with censorship and repression is unconscionable. Especially since China has a history of stealing our technology (or having it handed to them by certain unnamed presidents).
SHANGHAI, China (AP) -- Chinese bloggers, even on foreign-sponsored sites, had better choose their words carefully -- the censors are watching.
Users of the MSN Spaces section of Microsoft Corp.'s new China-based Web portal get a scolding message each time they input words deemed taboo by the communist authorities -- such as democracy, freedom and human rights.
Buy a pie at a pie shop, carefully remove the upper crust, and then gently lower a family of live gerbils into the pie. Replace the crust and storm back into the pie shop, indignantly pointing out the five little heads poking up through the crust. Collect ten million dollars and appear with the gerbils on “Larry King Live.” Repeat in all fifty states, with different pastry-rodent combinations so as to elude detection.
At the last election, the GOP succeeded in increasing its vote among American Jews by an estimated five percentage points. Does it propose to welcome these new adherents or sympathizers by yelling in the tones of that great Democrat bigmouth William Jennings Bryan? By insisting that evolution is "only a theory"? By demanding biblical literalism and by proclaiming that the Messiah has already shown himself? If so, it will deserve the punishment for hubris that is already coming its way. (The punishment, in other words, that Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson believed had struck America on Sept. 11, 2001. How can it be that such grotesque characters, calling down divine revenge on the workers in the World Trade Center, are allowed a respectful hearing, or a hearing at all, among patriotic Republicans?)
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The passion of those who want her to die seems so perverse it's hard to understand. Unless you connect the dots in the fringe left. Their compassion is for everything except human beings. They love animals, whales, trees, the environment, the earth. It's people (and, I believe, themselves) they can't stand.
The problem facing the FEC is that McCain-Feingold broadly restricts coordination with, and contributions to, political candidates. So what is the agency to do with all those people who use their Web sites to praise a candidate? Computers and Web access cost money, which could be construed as a financial contribution to a campaign. Ditto bloggers who link to politicians' Web sites, or any individual who forwards a candidate's press release to a list of buddies. All this is to say nothing of blogs that are affiliated with political campaigns and coordinate their activities.
Perhaps the most troubling feature of Roper is that it extends the High Court's recent habit of invoking foreign opinion in order to overrule American laws. "It is proper that we acknowledge the overwhelming weight of international opinion against the juvenile death penalty," Justice Kennedy writes. We thought the Constitution was the final arbiter of U.S. law, but apparently that's passé.
In a dissent, Scalia decried the decision, arguing that there has been no clear trend of declining juvenile executions to justify a growing consensus against the practice.
"The court says in so many words that what our people's laws say about the issue does not, in the last analysis, matter: 'In the end our own judgment will be brought to bear on the question of the acceptability of the death penalty,' he wrote in a 24-page dissent.
"The court thus proclaims itself sole arbiter of our nation's moral standards," Scalia wrote.
Dean also said the Bush administration has ignored the mounting threat in Iran and North Korea. 'We picked the low hanging fruit in Iraq and did nothing' about the other, more dangerous regimes," he said.
Ultimately the argument isn't about investment accounts, or stocks or bonds or 'gambling' or 'insecurity.' It is about socialism versus individualism, about Attlee's social justice and Hillary's common good and Chomsky's economic solidarity. AARP CEO William Novelli is in favor of allowing the government to invest Social Security surplus funds in the stock market, but against allowing individuals to do so--exactly the socialist argument, that government should control the distribution of the nation's wealth.
When you increase an individual's wealth, he becomes less dependent on government, and his attitude towards government changes. Socialists can't allow that, for it erodes their fundamental principle that social justice can only be achieved when important segments of the economy are under government control.
That Iraqi woman in the balcony brings a lump to my throat. I've thrown much criticism the way of this president because of missteps in the occupation. But it remains true and undeniable that without him, Saddam's tyranny would still be in place, terror would still have the initiative, and hope would be dim. His obstinacy is better described in this context as alloyed with something more profound: steadfastness. This president deserves the applause. And his insistence on no artificial time-table is exactly right. No surrender.