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they did not want a weather vane in the White house

I agree with your basic point that most people in the U.S. are perfectly capable of sound decision-making but please don't try and suggest that Bush doesn't change his mind with at least the frequency of Mr. Kerry.

Oh and this is fricken well done.

The NAACP suit was not about restoring voting rights to those human defendants, it was attempt to mudsling at Harris and DBT/Choicepoint.

Not to defame hero Katherine Harris or the freedom lovers at ChoicePoint, but that comment on the NAACP suit is certainly groundless and defensive. Besides, these people sling mud on themselves.

Harris and the accountable administrators at ChoicePoint could elevate their status considerably in the conservative movement by serving the prison time they've earned. Too bad there are Republican majorities in every level of government above them, so they'll never be prosecuted.

I have done the research in one of my comm classes (debate)...the process of appeals is expensive as hell - but that is a fault of the legal process... it does not make the law wrong - just means the red-tape is a problem.

According to CBS News the cost is 20k/year/inmate. This does not include the cost of a prison cell which is 100k/cell.

Or Here which lists the cost as about 20-40k per year per inmate.

Remember these are prices from a few years ago, rising costs everyday... According to the second article, prices went up by 250% since 1980. That article used data from 1997.

Here is another link to a site that talks about the costs Here

He also recently discovered that his father was murdered. And by recently, I mean a year and a half ago. However, his father was apparently murdered by a police officer during a jealous rage, which was covered up by other police officers, something not likely to be picked up in a background check.

He has every reason to be paranoid. I can't hate him for trying to spread his paranoia where it doesn't belong. I pity him.

How exactly are you supposed to stamp an e-mail with a line of 12 point text?

I mean a real e-mail. Not that stuff that Outlook Express users keep feeding my recycle bin.

On a heavier note, of course one can expect a little paranoia from Herb Vest, as he recently discovered that his father was murdered. But as he was murdered by a police officer for having an affair, this wouldn't really have helped.

Even with publicly funded research, it still costs hundreds of millions of dollars for companies to bring new drugs to market. The costs of drug trials will not change if someone else pays for them. For profit companies will do better at reducing those costs than non-profits. The best way to reduce the costs of bringing new drugs to market is to reduce regulation.

The FDA is still a decent watchdog. The risks of Vioxx and Celebrex are now very well known, and there is no reason to prevent informed consumers from making the choice of the risks and benefits of those drugs against the competition.

"...I call you my base"
It was as much Al Gore and Hillary Clinton's base. They and others were also at the Alfred E. Smith memorial dinner for charity.

The industry will fight vociferously to protect them.

If only the citizenry of the US would fight as hard for our REAL property rights! Over the last several years, eminent domain has been used by many municipalities to force people off of the property they OWN so that developers like Wal-Mart can build stores. Some examples:

Alameda Square in Denver Colorado: The City of Denver is considering condemning the shopping center so that Wal-Mart can build a super center. story

Alabaster, Alabama: Colonial Properties Trust wants to build a shopping center anchored by a Wal-Mart in the town of 24,000. The local government is all for it because they're "not receiving enough in tax revenue to support the town." Trouble is, there are a few property owners that don't want to sell. Answer, local government is resorting to eminent domain. They're citing the increase in tax revenue as the "public good" that justifies condemnation of the property. story

Ardmore, Pennsylvania. A local government plan to "revitalize" the town of Ardmore has officials seeking to use eminent domain to oust property owners and demolish several historic buildings. story

New London, Conneticut. (This is the Supreme Court case that's being heard and was referenced in the posted article). The town is attempting to use eminent domain to forcibly evict seven property owners and sieze their property so that a private company can develop more tax-profitable properties on the land. story

Lakewood, Ohio. Scenic Park, a middle class neighborhood, was seized under eminent domain. The homes were deemed "blighted" because they didn't conform to certain criteria. They didn't have three bedrooms, two baths, an attached garage or central air. Incidentally, the mayor's house, in another neighborhood, doesn't fit these criteria, either. The homes were razed in order to put in a mall and high-end condos. story

Ogden, Utah. The Mayor and City Council want to demolish 34 homes and 6 businesses in order to erect a Wal-Mart (there's that Wal-Mart again) Super Center.

Clemson, SC (right up I-26 from me). Pickens County Council voted to invoke eminent domain to condemn a tract of land zoned residential for the purpose of building a Wal-Mart. story

Between the years 1998-2002, TEN THOUSAND properties were seized via eminent domain in order for the municipalities to sell to private developers!!! The right to own land and property is directly tied to all our other rights. Now, I'm not a big, Anti-Corporation type of guy as I recognize that corporations are not vast, faceless entities, but are made up of individuals that work, eat, sleep, and all that. I have BECOME extremely anti-Wal-Mart, though, in part due to this eminent domain thing and also because of their recent trouble with the labor laws. I don't begrudge Wal-Mart's right to exist, but they've demonstrated time and time again that they are willing to tight rope the law and even break it if necessary in order to continue growing. They're like a virus that must be stopped. I'm on a personal boycott of Wal-Mart. If something isn't done about governments seizing property rightfully owned by law-abiding individuals, a huge pillar of our democratic republic is going to be severely compromised. This is no joke, people. This poses one of the most severe threats to our country.

If you want to keep abreast of the situation, here are a couple of good links. And I especially want to thank Neal Boortz (national talk radio guy, Libertarian). Were it not for him, FAR fewer pe

Do a google search on Davis Besse. Its the nuclear power plant that nearly let their containment vessel rust through.

As for the profitability of power companies versus media companies, First Energy, the owners of Davis Besse and some coal fired power plants cleared $878 million in profits just in the first quarter of 2004, and that was while they were stuggling to repair Davis Besse. Energy companies, thanks to deregulation, a blind eye from the FERC and the Bush administration, and a carefully managed shortage of power can charge as much as they want for electricty.

First Energy's name may sound familiar because they are also suspected to have been responsible for the blackout on the east coast.

Also reference Enron's scam to nearly bankrupt California by artificially inflating the price of electricity. California pled for the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to step in since it was obvious Enron was colluding with several other energy traders to extort billions of dollars from Californians for electricty. Their illegal activity, since proven by tapes of their energy traders planning the scam, bankrupted PG&E, hammered California's economy and is still hammering it due to the still high cost of electricity, and of course helped put the Republican's in to the governorship. Now there was a situation where some regulation, fines and criminal charges were called for and to date the Bush administration has done nothing about it, and many suspect were in fact colluding with Enron to commit this gigantic fraud, both to help Enron's profitibility and to force a Democrat Governor out of office.

All in all these fines are just the New Republican Party and the Religious right waging war on New York and Hollywood liberals and striving to inflict their puritanical values on everyone. Meanwhile they are letting their rich friends and big corporate backers rape, loot and pillage the public in order to make handsome profits.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/03/06/tech/mai n542962.shtml

It's very relevant when those against embryonic stem cell research start touting these results as arguments against the necessity for embryonic stem cell, as you are doing.

- There isn't a "ban" on any kind of stem cell research in the US. There is a restriction on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research - entities are still free to perform embryonic stem cell research (see California's recent US$3 billion bond initiative to support such research in the state) The ban is on federal funding for research involving any embryonic stem cell lines except those few, very limited lines derived before Bush's announcement of the ban. Additionally, the consensus among stem cell researchers is that those few lines which are available are fairly poor, most being contaminated. Oh, and the California Initiative? That's California attempting a legal run around the ban. You can't claim it as an example of it's merit.

- The Bush administration is the first administration to allow any federal funding at all for embryonic stem cell research. Granted, this is partly due to timing, but it's still a point of information.

It's entirely a matter of timing; the Clinton administration was aiming to put a much more liberal federal funding scheme which would not limit researchers to a few poor cell lines

And that's crucial: as well-fed and casual as they may look, the folks at Google are intense, burn-the-midnight-flourescent workaholics, all trying to come up with Google's "next big thing."

Google engineer Alan Eustace explains, "One of the ideas that we're working on is machine translation. We strongly believe that there's enough data on the Web and in the world right now to allow us to automatically translate from one language to another."

Darfur Crisis Causes U.S. To Stumble Over Opposition To International Court" U.S. Stubborn On Sudan

The basic problem is that the US doesn't want to back up the ICC (which the Bush administration opposes). Thankfully the administration is now supporting a security force (they weren't when the majority of the crimes were being committed), and this year is leading the effort to help get peacekeepers there. They're still causing rifts by trying to keep the ICC out of it, though.

Support Celiac Disease Research

Good article supporting your point on CBS News.

Just thought I'd ask.

If you're already out of high school, then I'm sure DeVry or some other fine institution will be happy to take your money and make you feel better about the situation for a while.

Yes, but the oil companies are not run by fools or idiots, unfortunately. Why do you think they staged a coup d'etat in the United States in 2000, and possibly again in 2004?

Get over it.. You lost, twice. Not because GW was an oil baron, or because the oil companies backed him. You lost because you chose poorly. Your candidate was and still is a sorry excuse for a politician, let alone a president.
Also, the president you are so fondly eluding to here is often called a fool or an idiot. Which is he, a smart rich oil baron or the foolhardy moron who can't figure out how to tie his left shoe?

Sane public policy would have us moving away from oil (and not cancelling vialbe programs that would have given us tangible results in three to five years, and replacing them with grandios programs that probably won't deliver in ten to fifteen years.

I assume by viable you refer to biodisel and hybrid engines, things of that nature. These are all good ideas, but they also create other problems too. Like tax collections to pay for the roadways you drive on.

... said programs of course to be cancelled and replaced again a couple of years before delivery with something else, rinse, wash, and repeat until the oil reserves have gone completely dry). That is something the oil plutocrats simply cannot abide, and, having seized control of the United States government, will not allow.

Which is totaly unlike mediscare, farm subsidies, or the hundreds of other programs which never deliver what they are promised to.

So no, we won't be joining Kyoto anytime soon. Sorry, folks.

Damn right we're not! Not everything that is drawn up by world wide politicians is good.

It may mortify me personally as an American to see what my government is doing, but as the odds of my vote even counting continue to decline I don't see much I can do about it, except gripe here on slashdot and send letters for my representatives to ignore.

Just because you lost does not mean you're vote doesn't count. Stop wallowing in self pitty and suck it up.

Now I can get acoustic neuroma run up my cell phone minutes, make Mr Gates even richer yet and hear my favorite songs reproduced with truely hideous sound quality while my hand and neck cramp up as I strain to use a device with the ergonomics of a brick. Whoopee for Billy ... won't make a nickle off of me. and my damn NOK is still 30% underwater.

Just a one- or two-degree change in temperature can lead to disease outbreaks." -- Drew Harvell, Cornell University Marine Ecologist

I suspect you are reading more in to the options thing that is really there. You see taxation and regulation is running against options and in favor of dividends at the moment. Options used to be practicly free money to hand out in previous years, but there is huge pressure now for companies to account for options since they dilute the value of shares owned by shareholders who bought them and previously were largely unaccounted for. Executives in particularly were massively abusing them to give themselves windfall profits, even if they weren't performing.

If you are a Microsoft employee I imagine you are maxing out your stock purchases lately and wanting cash bonuses to buy more stock.

You see, Microsoft paid out a $3 dollar dividend in December. It single handedly raised average income in the U.S. by 3.7% in December, without the dividend it would have been 0.8%. Though it should be noted that is an average, chances are the lion's share of it went in to the pockets of a few people, Gate's, Balmer, Allen, etc.

You see the Republican's passed a dividend tax cut in 2003 I think it was. I'm a little hazy on it but I think the tax on dividends is 0% at the moment. Just remember that if you work for a living when you see all those massive deductions out of your paycheck you can't escape. If you make $30K a year you are still probably paying 30% in withholding and payroll deductions. If you're Bill Gates at the moment you can pay billions of dollars to yourself in dividends and pay almost no taxes. Here is what Warren Buffet had to say about it when the Republicans were shoving it through.

The Republican argument was dividend taxes were double taxation, because the company paid taxes on it when the money was made and it was unfair to tax it again when it was paid out as a dividend. The little catch they didn't mention was big corporations exploit so many loopholes in the tax code, and take advantage of so many shelters they often don't pay any taxes in the first iteration.

If you were to go the options route you would pay a big chunk of the windfall of cashing them in capital gains taxes, not as much as you used to but a lot, compared to the 0% you pay on dividends at the money. Its pretty rare in the country to be able to make money and not pay any taxes on it. Bill Gates is not stupid, its pretty obvious now is a GREAT time to dole out all that cash in Microsoft's coffers as dividends, tax free. The dividend tax returns in 2007 though Little George is no doubt going to push to make the cut permanent.

Much of the recent economic "prosperity" is being pumped by tax policy that is letting the wealthy make out like bandits. The current tax code is a huge economic stimulus and that is good to pull an economy out of a recession. It is bad because its leading to huge deficits, and it is MASSIVELY unfair to working people who are getting chump change for tax incentives while the rich are harvesting huge windfalls, some of which they may reinvest in the U.S. and U.S. jobs, much of which is probably being invested in China, India, etc. or being blown on luxury goods.

You can sure tell when Republican's have complete control of things, because it is TOTALLY sweet to be a wealthy shareholder and it totally sucks to work for a living. The amazing thing is millions of working people who are being totally screwed by the Republicans, economicly, keep voting for them anyway. Republicans have some true genius, because they can sucker working people in to voting against their own economic interest by using wedge issues and scare tactics like terrorism, gay marriage, abortion, religion, etc.

Bush had to appear on national TV in June/July of 2003 to explain to the nation that we did not invade Iraq because of 9/11. Why? Because polls showed that almost 70% of the US population believed that to be the reason

*sigh*

You have the poll wrong, this poll was talked about in the media at length. The Poll was about an Saddam-September 11th link. The media would basically run stories like this one which includes this text "Yet, a new poll found that nearly 70 percent of respondents believed the Iraqi leader probably was personally involved" most of the stories talked about how the American public has been "mislead".

The actual poll however asked the question How likely is it that Saddam Hussein was personally involved in the September 11 terrorist attacks? Would you say that it is very likely, somewhat likely, not very likely, or not at all likely?

32 Percent of the people said it was very likely
37 percent said it was somewhat likely.

Somehow though, CBS turned this into "nearly 70 percent of the respondents believed the iraqi leader was probably personally involved". Maybe it's just me but the words probably and somewhat have different meanings to me. Also what does "personally involved" mean? Was Saddam personally involved if one of the September 11 hijackers trained at a terrorist camp in Iraq for sometime? Or does personally involved mean that Saddam was sending them money? Or does it mean Osama called Saddam and the two watched September 11th unfold on CNN from a remote cave somewhere? Ok, I'm being a little silly but I think you get my point.

Sometimes the questions in these polls aren't very clear and can mean different things to different people. Yet the media picks them up and spins them to run the stories they want to run to influence YOU and it works.

Yes, indeed, let the Bush bashing begin.

anyone on the conservative or Republican side of the spectrum is a greedy, money grubbing liar who would just LOVE to see an end to all environmental concerns

Anyone is free to make up their own minds about this, but allow me to illustrate a point:

Republicans are pushing for voluntary environmental controls. However, in publicly owned companies, the primary objective is to increase shareholder value. While it is an extreme example, a publicly held company could, in theory, be sued for complying with such regulations, as it would pull away capital but does not increase shareholder value in any way.

So how is it that the "voluntary controls" Republicans are doing something for the environment? I'm not calling the Democrats saints, either, but let's not disingenuously pretend that Bush or his friends give a rat's ass about the planet, eh?

But it is true that they are stockpiling WMDs and occupying Palestinian land. What about the UN resolutions on those topics? It is far too easy to claim anti-semitism and basically give Israel immunity from all UN resolutions.

I agree that FGM needs to be condemned, but then there should also be UN resolutions against male circumcision of babies that involves sucking the blood from a freshly circumcised baby's penis. Here is a picture on a not so good site (notice the domain name). I too thought that claims of this practice were anti-semitic bullshit... until I read all of the reputable news reports, CNN. Hell circumcising males using a medical instrament as opposed to a rabbi's mouth should also be prohibited, unless there is an urgent medical reason for doing so (none of that "it helps keep it clean crap", we don't cut our ears off do we) or the person is an adult and consents.

Hotels are used to the business model of splitting the revenue with partners. Apparently The hotels share the revenue with the in-room entertainment companies that provide the TVs and the content.

And it's a nice piece of profit to get a share of Then there are the big hotel chains: Hilton, Marriot, Hyatt, Sheraton and Holiday Inn, which all offer adult films on in-room pay-per-view television systems. And they are purchased by a whopping 50 percent of their guests, accounting for nearly 70 percent of their in-room profits. One hotel owner said, "We have to have it. Our guests demand it."

the "you, too" argument doesn't hold any water.

whatever iraqi soldiers did, or even saddam hussein did, doesnt justify or detract in the least from what american soldiers did. it is a non issue, completely and utterly irrelevant from the discussion.

the american soldiers got off pretty damned lightly for murder .

For those wishing to avoid NYT's soul-eating registration, try:
Congress Debates Saving Hubble

All features of your modified executable will work.

Wrong. Suppose one feature of the executable is playing blue-laser discs of Star Wars VII: Return of the Binks. That functionality will NOT WORK if the OS is flagged untrusted.

At it's core, returning true from the is_trusted() system call is the single critical feature that will be removed, crippling dozens of important programs running on that OS.

won't be able to lie to them

Lying is still, technically, a feature. I never said you had a right to do it- but yet, the GPL doesn't allow you to restrict what a recipient can do with the software you give him.

How in the world does stuff like this get modded up? Checking CBS's website, he still works for them (until his announced retirement in March). So fired? No. The entire news organization replaced? That ridiculous statement doesn't even need to be rebutted, obviously the hundreds (thousands?) of employees at CBS News weren't replaced over this. I'm not going to stand up for Bush on your other points, but the comments about Rather is overblown. He wasn't running an Op-Ed piece - this was an investigative report, published on a well-respected news program. His group chose to not fully examine the evidence, knowing full well that it would come under extreme scrutiny. They failed to perform the due diligence something of this magnitued required. Are you really going to defend them for failing to adequately do their jobs?

No, he was just fired, his staff canned, the entire news organization replaced with more Bush-friendly types
Wow I can't believe they fired him yet he's still on the air. Did somebody forget to tell him?
They fired the people's whose job was oversight, the producers, a producers chief aid, and a VP.
NO ONE will take on on Bush's people, else they get the Wilson/Rather treatment
The press isn't afraid to take on the president. I'm sure most of them would love to, as it would cement them in history. But they do need to be armed with something more concrete than questionable documents. It's not like these are "he said-she said" type questions, its fundamental problems with the evidence; unused typefaces, rarely used character proportions, wrong report format (if you think that scene in office space is bad, the military is worse about that kind of stuff).
Who needs government censorship when corporate censorship works so much better?
Yes, because I'm sure CBS would love to be considered tabloid news. You know the stuff people don't take seriously because most of it is false, or at best questionable in credibility. Credibility is everything in news. After the embarassment of 2000, just look at how cautious the networks were in something as trivial as calling the winner of the election in 2004.

If Dan Rather says its true, doesn't that make it so??

Maybe because we instead see More And More Deserts On Earth?

Okay let's say Bill is worth 50 billion dollars on paper. 750 million is something like 1.5% of his total worth?

You're ignoring the huge amount of money and resources donated by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in the past. In fact, this $750 million is in additon to another $750 million they pledged in 1999 to the same organization.

But what's another $12.5 million for immunization in India, or $43 million for antimilarial drugs here and there. After all, it's just a drop in the bucket to Bill Gates -- he would donate more if he weren't so greedy and evil, right? They set up that Foundation as a tax dodge, and certainly not as a way of making sure that money gets directed at the right groups doing the right things, and not people just looking for a handout. No, there's definitely no need to make sure the money gets spent making a difference and not pissed away by NGO bureaucracy. You can just "donate" and forget about it, like you do with that $1.50 to the guy in the street who's just going to go buy some Wild Irish Rose and hit you up for another $1.50 tomorrow.

Yeah, I'm kind of annoyed at the way Slashdotters seem to have reacted to this news.

If this were in fact true, (and it's not), there would be massive evidence of this, and it would have been brought out years ago, or at the very least this last election cycle. There is no proof of what you say because it didn't happen that way.

Oh, look, here's the review of the CBS investigation (PDF).

Oh, look, here's an article from 1999 about Dubya dodging the draft.

Oh, look, here's another one.

... so which part of what I wrote isn't true?

Uteri seems to be less of a problem; at least some women's work fine through age 66.

Bollywood's viewership is 3.8 billion vs Hollywood's 3.2 billion.

Former Miss World, bollywood queen, and my current heartthrob Aishwarya Rai was featured on 60 mins as the world's most beautiful woman and is among the cast in the next Hollywood James Bond flick.

Sean Hannity

Bill O'Reilly.

Here's one example: Bill O'Reilly said that Bush did not oppose the creation of the 9/11 comission, which he quite unambiguously did oppose. So, since Bill O'Reilly is "fundamentally a pusher of opinion" is this not a lie?

ABC
CBS
NBC
CNN


This is the new millenium. Information is at your fingertips. Come up with your own conclusions.
We're not dependent on these news outlets as our only source.

I would have thought this would be your link source...

I should also have included some relevant links to Internet based news sources bookmarked in Safari:

Slashdot of course.
CNN of course.
NYTimes for the writing and quality of reporting.
BBC for the big mainstream non American news perspective.
Kevin Sites for on the ground reporting in Iraq.
Dan Gillmor for news grassroots news.
CBS for financial info.
CNET for tech news.
Global Security for political defense news.
Google for a good news accumulator.
Cryptome because John manages to pull some pretty damned interesting articles out.
NPR of course. Don't forget to donate.
Reuters because they have the news.
Washington Post for beltway news.
Wall St. Journal for more financial news.
NPR Marketplace for more financial news.
CBS for mainstream US news.
Technocrat for real science oriented geek news, like Slashdot only with less noise.
Oh, yeah and
Macsurfer for a Macintosh community oriented news accumulator.

Dan Rather apologized during the evening news. CBS News Story

The height of irony, critize a journalist for getting his facts wrong and in the same breath get your facts wrong.

I expect an apology.

f this is true, why haven't the economists been coming out of the woodwork in support of this plan? Why have so many of them come out of the woodwork to say that the centerpiece of his plan--private accounts--is more likely to hurt Social Security than help it?

You haven't been paying much attention to Alan Greenspan's recent pronouncements, have you? I forgive you, because you're overseas and not paying attention to US news sources. But it's kind of hard to miss.

It is not Iraq all over again. Social Security is a Ponzi Scheme, and has to fail -- maintaining it is impossible. People also don't pay attention to the harsh facts of the program when it was instituted.....there were sixteen payees to each recepiant, and the national life expectancy was below the retirement age. Today, there are three payees, and the average life expectancy is eleven years after the retirement age.

Medicare has exacerbated the problem (and Bush made it worse by deciding that it's a good idea to force taxpayers to pay for old men's Viagra). Medicare is scheduled to go broke before Social Security.

-- big anti-Bush rant snippage, because it's not even worth commenting on --

The surface: We're trying to fix Social Security. Dig deeper: We're trying to dismantle a socialist program and return it to the hands of private industry. Dig deeper still: We believe it will benefit us in the long run, but we're not about to get bogged down by actually debating this.

Government pensions should be eliminated -- I disagree with giving them to "private industry." Your retirement is your responsibility, not mine.

Hence, we end up abusing projections, cherrypicking data for the worst case scenarios, and hauling out the boogeyman of a "bankrupt social security" that will leave us broke and destitute--which simply isn't the case.

Take a math course, and a public finance course, it might do you good. It's a pyramid scheme. With a declining birthrate, and increasing number of beneficiaries, it's simple math -- it will collapse, unless you up taxes well over fifty percent, and eliminate the yearly caps for individuals. The only way to "save" it is to raise the retirement age to eighty or higher. Outlawing birth control and abortion would help matters, too, because getting that population up will be necessary. People, start gettin' busy, because the baby boomers begin retiring in fifteen years....those kids will need to go right to work!

Yes, Social Security needs attention and adjustment.
Wait a minute, you just said it was fine!
No, it's not the ticking time bomb the administration is so fervently claiming it is.
Then, why wait until it is, when it can be done cleanly now, without causing more people difficulty?

The two leading South Dakota blogs - websites full of informal analysis, opinions and links - were authored by paid advisers to Thune's campaign.

The Sioux Falls Argus Leader and the National Journal first cited Federal Election Commission documents showing that Jon Lauck, of Daschle v Thune, and Jason Van Beek, of South Dakota Politics, were advisers to the Thune campaign.

The documents, also obtained by CBS News, show that in June and October the Thune campaign paid Lauck $27,000 and Van Beek $8,000. Lauck had also worked on Thune's 2002 congressional race.

Both blogs favored Thune, but neither gave any disclaimer during the election that the authors were on the payroll of the Republican candidate.

"This textbook contains material on evolution. Evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully, and critically considered."

Specifically, U.S. District Judge Clarence Cooper found that the first sentence of that sticker had the effect of endorsing religion in violation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.

"This textbook contains material on evolution, a scientific theory, or explanation, for the nature and diversity of living things. Evolution is accepted by a majority of scientists, but questioned by some. All scientific theories should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully and critically considered."

So there you have it. Cobb County school officials tried to be progressive, had second thoughts when an organized group of parents chimed in, and will end up satisfying no one.

Just to put the numbers in perspective, this article from last year gives News Corp's value at $31.4B. Although this is a fair bit bigger than EA's - it's not that much bigger, which does say a lot.

We've spent hundreds of millions of dollars in a fruitless search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq as a part of a war that cost billions (and thousands of American/"Coalition" and Iraqi lives), and not only was Bush handily reelected, but he had the gall to give Medals of Freedom to George Tenet, Paul Bremer, and Tommy Franks--the three prime architects of this utter disaster. Everyone who's given this administration warnings, cautious advice, or contradictory evidence against patently absurd assertions has been targeted for demolition. This administration doesn't know the meaning of the word accountability. Heck, Bush probably pronounces it "accountamability" anyway.

I thought "why" too.

The best I could find on this was "is not now and unlikely to be an adequate tool for counterterrorism analysis because (it) was designed with criminal investigation requirements in mind." - CBS News

Not all that unlikely. Think about it from another angle. If an individual or individuals enter a home when they know a person is likely to be there (at night for example) that person or those persons have a plan for dealing with the inhabitants of that home. It could be as simple as tieing them up while they rob the place, shooting them in cold blood, driving them to ATMs to empty their bank accounts and then killing them, or any combination of heinous things. About a month ago a few miles to my east a woman was the victim of a home invasion. She lived but will never be the same again (is any victim ever the same?). If a home invasion does happen to you, it's likely that you will be injured in some way or even killed. Maybe you've heard of our local serial killer, self-dubbed "BTK" for "Bind, Torture, Kill." It's been on CNN for some time now, America's Most Wanted too. He invades his victim's homes. Home invasions are not that uncommon. I heard testimony before the Kansas Senate FSA Committee last year from a Kansas House member on behalf of a woman in her district that had been the victim of a home invasion. This invasion wasn't for money. It was to rape the mother. The attacker told her he'd kill her children down the hall if she screamed or fought him. When you look at raw statistics take into account that home invasions are listed in many different categories including but not limited to burglary, violent offences, aggravated assault, forcible rape, and murder. There isn't a category in the FBI's UCR for home invasions.

I'm also sure that the people who have been the victim of a home invasion would also disagree with your sentiment that it doesn't happen very often. I have a good example from you from the town in which I currently live. Have you ever heard of the Wichita Massacre. Yes, the name is a bit on the Hollywood-side but once you read the story you'll feel the title is quite justified. Only one person survived that night raped by the attackers and by her friends forced to rape her at gun point and after being shot in the head. That happened in a well-to-do neighborhood. Want to hear about another person who was the victim of another home invasion? Have you heard about Bridget Kelly? Her attacker only shot her 3 times in the back after robbing and raping her. I think there are some people who would disagree with you when you trivialize the number of people that are the victims of home invasions.

So I guess now we can hang the banner back up?

but other publications copy the image witout including all the specifics. Is it NASA's fault that all the caveats are removed?

I was thinking. Maybe big telescopes should have a warning sticker that reads:

WARNING: Objects in primary mirror are further
than they appear in NASA photos, are are really
grey and boring to the human eye, which can
only see colors in the visable spectrum instead
of all the other wavelengths we add to photos
to make them pretty, informative, interesting,
and are damn great PR to help grow NASA's budget.

So. Barnes was elected by the people of Texas as the Democratic Lt. Governor because he helped out Bush? Keep digging!

When Barnes was the speaker of the House, Bush was the only Republican even IN the Texas Congressional delegation, and only one Republican state Senator, and only a few Republican state House members.

Barnes was running for election before he called on behalf of Bush, and he was a shoo-in to win because he was the Democratic candidate, and the Democrats won all statewide offices at that time.

You're just making it all up.

Since Barnes has confessed, until there's similarly credible denial of his story, it's incriminating.

How about Barnes himself, denying it? He said to Rather, "Well, Sid Adger, and not the Bush family came to see me, to ask me to get-- President Bush-- George W. Bush into the National Guard, which I made the call to Gen. Rose. And he was accepted. Whether he was accepted solely because of my call, I do not know."

What is more accurate, judging from the rest of the transcript, is that he does not know if he was accepted even in PART because of Barnes' call. He said he was assuming that was the case, and never got any feedback that said his call made a difference.

I'd say that this question, since it seems to continue to burn so brightly on especially the Republican agenda (as a "fraud"), should be decided by a judge

Um, except, no laws are even ALLEGED to have been violated in this matter.

You're making everything up, and it's sad.