Slashdot Mirror

I had a much better article that pointed to an article that says the student admitted to making up the story. Here's a link: Student admits hoax

Here's a link to an OpinionJournal article on it.

>Do you know of a good site debunking the swift boat stuff?

    How about this first person account in Wall Street Journal from the man whose life John Kerry saved?
JIM RASSMANN: Shame on the Swift Boat Veterans for Bush: John Kerry saved my life. Now his heroism is being questioned. http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.ht ml?id=110005460

The courts have been explicit on this point, most recently in In Re: Sealed Case, the 2002 opinion by the special panel of appellate judges established to hear FISA appeals. In its per curiam opinion, the court noted that in a previous FISA case (U.S. v. Truong), a federal "court, as did all the other courts to have decided the issue [our emphasis], held that the President did have inherent authority to conduct warrantless searches to obtain foreign intelligence information." And further that "we take for granted that the President does have that authority and, assuming that is so, FISA could not encroach on the President's constitutional power." http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.ht ml?id=110007703

Hmm. Judicial review disagrees with you. Unfortunitly their opinions matter.

The courts have been explicit on this point, most recently in In Re: Sealed Case, the 2002 opinion by the special panel of appellate judges established to hear FISA appeals. In its per curiam opinion, the court noted that in a previous FISA case (U.S. v. Truong), a federal "court, as did all the other courts to have decided the issue [our emphasis], held that the President did have inherent authority to conduct warrantless searches to obtain foreign intelligence information." And further that "we take for granted that the President does have that authority and, assuming that is so, FISA could not encroach on the President's constitutional power." http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.ht ml?id=110007703

FISA itself has ruled that:
The courts have been explicit on this point, most recently in In Re: Sealed Case, the 2002 opinion by the special panel of appellate judges established to hear FISA appeals. In its per curiam opinion, the court noted that in a previous FISA case (U.S. v. Truong), a federal "court, as did all the other courts to have decided the issue [our emphasis], held that the President did have inherent authority to conduct warrantless searches to obtain foreign intelligence information." And further that "we take for granted that the President does have that authority and, assuming that is so, FISA could not encroach on the President's constitutional power." http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.ht ml?id=110007703

Bush also pointed out that the 9/11 resolution gave him additional authority. Here is the verbage:
"use all necessary force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations, or persons [...] "

I think the reason most people don't feel the same way about New Orleans as New York is this. http://www.opinionjournal.com/best/?id=110007249 People like this, it is nice to see where you tax dollars go isn't it?

Although these micro-headlines do give us such gems as these, lifted from James Taranto:

• "Black Faces Day in Chicago Court"--headline, Globe and Mail (Toronto), Nov. 22
• "Door Thwarts Quick Exit for Bush"--headline, BBC Web site, Nov. 20
• "Source: Cheney Isn't Woodward's Source"--headline, Associated Press, Nov. 17
• "Bird Flu Drug 'Safe' Despite Death Link"--headline, Daily Telegraph (Australia), Nov. 19 - "Gee, that's 'comforting'"
• "Man Arrested for Stealing Car, Alluding Police"--headline, Jackson (Mich.) Citizen Patriot, Nov. 16 - "'Look Out for That Guy in the Uniform, if You Catch My Drift'"
• "Superman Returns Trailer"--headline, IGN.com, Nov. 17 - "It's About Time That Mooch Gave It Back"

If you say anything critical of darwinian evolution around on /. - you'll oft be modded a troll, for example linking the fossils that appear to challenge the darwinian evolution timeline
http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v18/i4/di nosaurs.asp
http://www.bible.ca/tracks/tracks.htm

Darwinian evolution is supposed to be a well grounded theory on origin, not a philosophy.
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/20 05/05/01/evolutionary_war/

The rise of ID or creationism, can be seen as a challenge to the humanist/atheist adoption of darwinian evolution.

Merely giving a voice to ID supporters, can be dangerous to your career in the scientific community.
http://www.rsternberg.net/
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic le/2005/08/18/AR2005081801680.html
http://www.opinionjournal.com/taste/?id=110006220

There are arguements to be made in favor of teaching ID
http://www.americanthinker.com/articles.php?articl e_id=4761

I take a more dialectic approach, instead of one based on censorship or herd mentality.

How bad is it when you're two fricken' days later than the WSJ's OpinionJournal.com and three days later than the Associated Press?

The shark /. jumped a few years ago is now playing leapfrog using a ski jump.

Read about the firestorm that the politically-correct liberals like Walter Cronkite caused when someone wanted to put power-generating windmills in Nantucket Sound near Martha's Vineyard:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/06/26/sunday/m ain560595.shtml

http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/clevey/?i d=110002097

Note how a Kennedy opposes it here:

http://www.grist.org/news/powers/2002/12/19/grisco m-windmill/

Fricken' hypocrits. Nothing like a leftist environmentalist to tell everyone what's good for them, until it interferes with the view from their $10 million estate on the Vineyard.

And speaking of Kennedys, Martha's Vineyard, and submarines:

Q: Who do you get if you cross Mario Andretti and Jacques Cousteau?
A: Teddy Kennedy

Has Tom DeLay or Bill Frist or Karl Rove actually killed anyone?

If by "target terrorists" you mean kill the people who resist our illegal occupation plus some others who happened to get in the way...

"repair infrastructure" you mean fail to repair infrastructure,

and by "build schools" you mean stage photo-ops,

"plant democracy" you mean pave the way for an Iranian-allied theocracy and civil war

What are you doing posting on Slashdot? Go over there and plant democracy! The Marines need you!

Don't go holding your breath:

The Inequality Taboo
It's time to start talking about differences between groups of people.
BY CHARLES MURRAY
Wednesday, October 12, 2005 12:01 a.m.
http://www.opinionjournal.com/forms/printThis.html ?id=110007391

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/production/files /murray0905.html#Charles%20Murray

Sigh...

The Republicans are running China!

Er?

Our most comparable law is McCain-Feingold, which had more Democrat support than Republican. Rush Limbaugh, of all people, predicted it would be used to stifle political speech.

Oh, well. It wouldn't have been modded funny if you'd said "Democrats," because most people here are completely ignorant of politics. They only know "Republicans = Bad, Democrats = Good."

So what? I stood in line for four hours in my heavily Republican district in 2000. I made my kids stand in line too, as a lesson in civic responsibility. In the whole four hours, I only saw one person leave the line. We are broken-glass Republicans around here.

If these districts you mention are heavily Democratic areas, then someone needs to take the issue up with the presumably Democratic local election officials. Just like in Florida during the 2000 elections, when most of the alleged vote tampering for Bush took place in localities that were run by Democrats from top to bottom.

And I have no sympathy for any Democrat who finds a quart of malt liquor and a Jerry Springer Show rerun more appealing than taking a few hours every four years to exercise their right to vote. Fuck 'em, they don't deserve representation.

-ccm

Perhaps it's significant because Microsoft is whining about declining CS enrollment and lobbying the government for an increase in the H-1B cap, when they really aren't doing much local hiring.

Health care is one of the areas where capitalism is really the wrong motivation (because our long term health is not their concern - just short term costs).

This is not entirely true, after all, from their perspective, the best outcome is a person who lives long (pays premiums) but doesn't spend all that much money while they are living. That requires a certain amount of prevention. (And of course, dies in their sleep. 1/3rd of health costs in the US (or, alternatively, 4% of GNP) is spent on the last 60 days of life...which I consider a problem, but with no easy solution. Another way of looking at that--2 hours of your 40 hour work week are spent putting money away toward the time that you're on your deathbed, but the health insurance system is throwing everything at you to keep you living. That certainly is a short term decision.)

At any rate, oddly, the US health system is actually pretty uncapitalistic. One article talks about the fact that a family in Kansas City MO could have health insurance for $172/month but the same family would pay $800 in New York State and $1200 in Jersey. The failure here is that NY and NJ have a massive amount of requirements that insurance companies have to pay for, and the result is that a lot of people are priced out of the market. (The article discusses a possible solution.)

In other countries of the world, it's not unusual to see clinics talk about the cost of certain procedures. Let's say you don't have insurance, and you need an MRI. I would not hesitate to tell you to fly to another country and have it done there. For instance, this clinic in Bombay can get you an MRI for 3500-13500 Rupees (about $75-$300.) Counting in airfare and a hotel stay, you're probably spending just 1/3rd of the cost of an MRI in the states. (Though I dont know the cost of an MRI in the states.)

As a result of this, I've been very excited about putting together a business which would charter a flight down to a country, arrange MRIs, cat scans, X-rays, dental surgery...what have you, in a much cheaper country, and fly them back. If I personally don't do that, I'm sure someone else will.

I've been reading too much Best of the Web, I think, because I initially read the headline and thought "Do you download the entire Internet, or just part of it?"

Staged? (Score:2)
by Aexia (517457) on Monday August 08, @02:32PM (#13271688)

Well, there was the fact that the bank scene was staged.

How exactly?

When you see me going in to the bank and walking out with my new gun in "Bowling for Columbine" - that is exactly as it happened. Nothing was done out of the ordinary other than to phone ahead and ask permission to let me bring a camera in to film me opening up my account. I walked into that bank in northern Michigan for the first time ever on that day in June 2001,

But Jan Jacobson, the bank employee who worked with Mr. Moore on his account, says that only happened because Mr. Moore's film company had worked for a month to stage the scene. "What happened at the bank was a prearranged thing," she says. The gun was brought from a gun dealer in another city, where it would normally have to be picked up. "Typically, you're looking at a week to 10 days waiting period," she says. Ms. Jacobson feels used: "He just portrayed us as backward hicks."

Brewster, Jennings was a great CIA asset, with close ties to ARAMCO and other major oil companies and ministries. Now it is useless as a front for US intelligence.... ...Wouldn't it be nice if at this time of uncertainty, the USA had some kind of asset capable of investigating these things from up close? Too bad a political vendetta destroyed major intelligence assets that could have helped with just that.

Indeed. Certainly there is no possibility that they might have other front companies in that vital economic sector now, or could possibly form them in the future. I guess we're just screwed.

A provocative view of how to deal with Rove and his deeds is pondered here.

The state department is wrong.

Oh yeah, and lets not forget that we could have killed al Zarqawi in the past, because we knew right where he was and we had had him cornered. This was not our agenda however, so we let him live.

Which is also why President Clinton declined to take custody of bin Laden when offered him. Hindsight is always 20/20, ain't it?

I would also like to point out that a "War" is often defined as clashing armies, or states, or coilitions. Not generally civilians.

A war is an armed conflict.

You cannot have a "war" on terror. War simply spreads more terror.

Yes, you can. And yes, it does.

If a people are being oppressed (from their prespective, not ours), they will spread terror against their oppressors.

That's a naive viewpoint. It's hard to terrorize your oppressors when your oppressor can gas an entire village of people and slaughter them all. If revolutions were this simple, there'd be no more dictators.

A man is the most dangerous when you take away his hopes and dreams, and from their perspective this is exactly what we have done (I am sure I stole that quote from somewhere).

*double take* BWUAH!? We have taken whose hopes and dreams? Al Qaeda's? Well, yeah, then good, fuck them. Iraq? How in the world have the hopes and dreams of Iraqis been dashed by the United States?

Lets not forget that only one nation has ever used a Nuclear Bomb during warfare, and it was used on civilians, TO SPREAD TERROR!

Everybody loves to drag this one out. I think the power of the bomb could have been demonstrated without as much loss of life, but I wasn't sitting in the Oval Office in 1945 looking at casualty lists and projecting casualty lists of an invasion of Japan's homeland and trying to make a decision. I think that Truman really thought he was doing the right thing for America. The bomb was not dropped to "spread terror," that was an ancillary benefit.

At least the polls are starting to show that Americans have started to figure out that Bush is evil, however it is too bad it took this long! Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos.

I don't believe the man is evil. Men like Osama bin Laden are evil. Men like Saddam Hussein are evil. It's a little disturbing how comfortably and easily you draw a moral equivilency between a regime that fed political opponents into plastic shredders and the current American president.

On the concept of technology and values, Victor Davis Hanson wrote an article back in 2002 I found thought-provoking. Link here.

Relevant quote from the article:

"Americans find this Middle Eastern cultural schizophrenia maddening, especially in its inability to fathom that all the things that Muslim visitors profess to hate--equality of the sexes, cultural freedom, religious tolerance, egalitarianism, free speech and secular rationalism--are precisely what give us the material things that they want in the first place. CDs and sexy bare midriffs are the fruits of a society that values freedom, unchecked inquiry and individual expression more than the dictates of state or church; wild freedom and wild materialism are part of the American character. So bewildered Americans now ask themselves: Why do so many of these anti-Americans, who profess hatred of the West and reverence for the purity of an energized Islam or a fiery Palestine, enroll in Chico State or UCLA instead of madrassas in Pakistan or military academies in Iraq?"

His answer is even more interesting. Hanson is kind of a conservative, but I liked this article.

Why do you hate freedom?

Research shows that the BBC is to the left of even the two most liberal senators in the US Senate. This makes it unsafe to watch. Also, it's funded by obligatory public subscription, which is un-American and almost socialistical.

Watch Fox news instead, where honest men and women tell it like they were told it is.

For an opposing opinion on this, here's the Journal's take. Biased? Yes. Worth taking into consideration? Yes. YMMV.

Patriot Act Posturing
How desperate is the ACLU?
Thursday, May 19, 2005 12:01 a.m. EDT

Several provisions of the Patriot Act come up for renewal this year and debate is already under way in Congress. Today the Senate Intelligence Committee is scheduled to hold a hearing on the FBI's subpoena power in terrorism cases, which the Administration wants Congress to expand. It's a closed-door session so that Senators can weigh classified information.

Enter the ACLU. The civil liberties organization is so desperate to derail the Patriot Act that it has gone to the extreme of protesting the closed-door nature of the meeting, saying that "lawmakers are trying to keep legislation to reauthorize the Patriot Act secret." Oh, really? The reason the hearing is closed is because Senators "will discuss actual intelligence operations and how the Patriot Act applies to those operations," a spokesman says.

The subject under discussion is the "administrative subpoena," which would allow the FBI to subpoena documents without first going to a judge in emergency situations involving national security. Congress long ago gave the FBI administrative subpoena power for cases involving narcotics, health-care fraud, child pornography, and a host of other areas in which fast action can make a difference. A party served with an administrative subpoena can challenge it in court if it believes it is unwarranted.

As the ACLU surely knows, one of the reasons the FBI is asking for administrative subpoenas for terrorism cases is customer demand. Since 9/11, hotels, Internet service providers and other businesses have voluntarily cooperated when the FBI has asked for emergency information on terrorist suspects. But in this lawsuit-crazed age, they want the legal cover of being able to say they were complying with a subpoena; it's a way of protecting themselves against liability suits from organizations like the ACLU. Now there's a subject for a Congressional hearing.

The Wall Street Journal does the opposite, which I think is the right idea.

Their opinion page is available right here, for free. This makes sense, because they are trying to influence the world with it. Thus, they are more interested in power (number of readers) than money (subscription revenues).

Their up to the minute financial news, on the other hand, has real financial value to many people, and its wide dissemination is not as important as receiving money for it. I would think the same would be true of the New York Times - the articles would have financial value but the opinions would be better made free.

Intriguingly enough, the Times' subscription is actually excellent value to anyone who wants to access the Times archives. They were charging $2.95 per article or $7.95 for a four-pack of articles. Unlimited access to articles for $50 is a good deal if you want to read old Times articles in any volume.

D

There are just two problems with mass transit. Nobody uses it, and it costs like hell. Only 4% of Americans take public transportation to work. Even in cities they don't do it. Less than 25% of commuters in the New York metropolitan area use public transportation. Elsewhere it's far less--9.5% in San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose, 1.8% in Dallas-Fort Worth. As for total travel in urban parts of America--all the comings and goings for work, school, shopping, etc.--1.7 % of those trips are made on mass transit.

Then there is the cost, which is--obviously--$52 billion. Less obviously, there's all the money spent locally keeping local mass transit systems operating. The Heritage Foundation says, "There isn't a single light rail transit system in America in which fares paid by the passengers cover the cost of their own rides." Heritage cites the Minneapolis "Hiawatha" light rail line, soon to be completed with $107 million from the transportation bill. Heritage estimates that the total expense for each ride on the Hiawatha will be $19. Commuting to work will cost $8,550 a year. If the commuter is earning minimum wage, this leaves about $1,000 a year for food, shelter and clothing. Or, if the city picks up the tab, it could have leased a BMW X-5 SUV for the commuter at about the same price.Those are really pretty good reasons. Mass transit makes no sense. No one uses it unless they're forced to, and they never will. As *free* people, Americans reject the tyranny of forced busing - or forced train rides, for that matter. Either way, it's worth your life to deal with the roving gangs of street thugs that can't be cleared out for fear of "racial profiling". (I wonder if the figures above count the policeman per train car that has proven to be necessary because of this exact problem in several cities I've visited.) It is hard to think of an idea that makes less sense than Mass Transit - abondoning rails in favor of roads was one of the greatest sources of progress in the 20th Century.

Uh...no. GWB is a Big Government Republican.

I think the whole campaign finance reform thing was a scam so the big money could control who could contribute to politics.

This is one of those times when I wish it were possible to mod someone up past 5. I can't believe that, on the whole first page of comments, only this person and one other properly identified the source of this crap idea.

It was your precious McCain-Feingold act, the one that so many Slashdotters thought was such a wonderful idea, which was supposed to keep big money out of government (and hasn't) that has necessitated this garbage. Did you all reflexively disbelieve the right-wingers when they told you nothing good would come of it? Is that why you all missed it? I mean, nothing Rush Limbaugh says can possibly be true, right?

McCain-Feingold has got to go, if only for this.

More reading material is here. It's from a right-wing perspective (which is, as far as I know, about the same as Libertarian on this issue), so it tends to be more honest than the stuff from the fiscal moderate and left which only blames the FEC.

That Wall Street Journal had an even better editorial on Monday.

According to the article, the campaign finance "reform" movement to limit our first amendment rights did not have broad-based politcial support. Instead, McCain-Feingold was the product of a secret $123 million astroturfing conspiracy run by the Pew foundation and seven other foundations. Like the super villians in a James Bond spy novel, Sean Treglia of the Pew Foundation, could not stop himself from bragging about how brilliantly was their evil scheme succeeding.

I know, at first, that sounds like crackpot stuff, but the WSJ seems to have its facts in order here.

Did anyone catch the name of the Judge that started this BS...

While you're correct that this is a good example of a completely unchecked judiciary in the USA, it wasn't the judiciary that started the mess. It all comes from McCain Feingold, which was pushed due to an extremely well funded progressivist astroturf movement (pseudo grassroots). The breaking news on this was best written by the Wall Street Journal's John Fund, covering Pew officer Sean Treglia's spilling of the beans on how they fooled Congress:

If a political gaffe consists of inadvertently revealing the truth, then Sean Treglia, a former program officer for the Philadelphia-based Pew Charitable Trusts, has just ripped the curtain off of the "good government" groups that foisted the McCain-Feingold campaign finance bill on the country in 2002. The bill's restrictions on political speech have the potential for great mischief; just last month a member of the Federal Election Commission warned they could limit the activities of bloggers and other Internet commentators.

What Mr. Treglia revealed in a talk last year at the University of Southern California is that far from representing the efforts of genuine grass-roots activists, the campaign finance reform lobby was controlled and funded by liberal foundations like Pew. In a tape obtained by the New York Post, Mr. Treglia tells his USC audience they are going to hear a story he can reveal only now that campaign finance reform has become law. "The target audience for all this [foundation] activity was 535 people in [Congress]," Mr. Treglia says in his talk. "The idea was to create an impression that a mass movement was afoot. That everywhere [Congress] looked, in academic institutions, in the business community, in religious groups, in ethnic groups, everywhere, people were talking about reform."

The truth was far different. Mr. Treglia admits that campaign-finance supporters had to try to hoodwink Congress because "they had lost legitimacy inside Washington because they didn't have a constituency that would punish Congress if they didn't vote for reform."

So instead, according to Mr. Treglia, liberal reform groups created a Potemkin movement.

Read the whole article here. Any wonder why free speech isn't a Democrat value any more? Retention of 60 years of power apparently trumps the value of little people like bloggers having Constitutional rights. And yes, it is about the courts now. FDR created a little known oligarchy that controls most political processes in the United States. It now does not matter what the Congress (or a state legislature) passes, or what a Governor or President signs. FDR's court machine is the ultimate determinant of law. And when a judge can be paid off more by a Microsoft or RIAA than any bunch of pathetic citizens, are you surprised why the laws are being interpreted to be what they are?

The Wall Street Journal had an editorial about this topic on Wednesday:

http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.ht ml?id=110006458

I'm surprised that /.ers are just now hearing about it.

The Wall Street Journal has a short history of the hocky stick dispute here here. (free registration)

Only a few loudmouthed cranks are keeping the idea that "there really is debate on the issue" alive, in the sense you mean.

Indeed, and here are some of those cranks:

Chris Landsea contradicts public statements by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), denying any evidence that global warming increases hurricane activity, and makes a big show of it by resighing

Other cranks maintain that global climate change existed in the middle ages, before humans increased atmospheric CO2. (link might require free registration)

Fortunately, dissenters such as Landsea are either voluntarily surrendering their positions, or, as in the case of the editors of Climate Research mentinod in the second link, being forced out of their jobs for allowing the crank viewpoint into print.

Dr Ian Macreadie, who admits in an interview published on a creationist website that he is ridiculed by other scientists for his beliefs in regards to evolution.

Dr. John R. Meyer, who directly profits from sales of books and materials to people trying to push the creationist agenda

Dr. Carl B Fliermans, a biol[ogi]st who specializes in soil microbiology and works primarily for the government, a job (like many) made more secure by registering as a "creationist,"

Dr Raymond G. Bohlin, who (from the link you posted) has a direct personal financial interest in pushing creationism over evolution.

Mr. Gary Parker, who has based his professional carreer and personal financial stability largely on writing books and lecturing on creationism to people who already support creationism.

Creationism (or 'intelligent design', if you prefer) is unfalsifiable in part because it relies on an omnipotent creator who is used to explain every scientific question.

Why can't creationists be honest and say, "Evolution is the best scientific theory of how life evolved, but I believe in creation because I believe in God, something science takes no stand on"?

The Center for the Understanding of Origins is an interdisciplinary Center at Kansas State University. The center aims to foster bold and scholarly interdisciplinary research addressing issues of origins, especially the origin of the physical Universe, of the Earth, of Life, of intelligence, and of language.

The Center comprises permanent faculty from the departments of Biology, English, Entomology, History, Geology, Philosophy, and Physics. The Center's faculty are involved in developing general education courses and honors seminars for undergraduates, and a graduate certificate program in the study of origins. The Center sponsors both academic and public speakers, with the aim of transforming the discussion of important origins subjects such as evolution from one of hostile arguments between "experts" and "special interests" to informed debate among citizens.

Here are his instructions to Abram, who was renamed Abraham: "Look attentively, I pray thee, towards the heavens, and count the stars, if thou art able to count them". (-;

On a more serious note, yes, the rise of the Religious Right presents a steadily increasing problem. Did you know that "religious nuts" are responsible for the separation-of-church-and-state provisions in both the US and Australian Constitutions? A chap by the name of Alonzo T Jones dunnit. The Powers That Were wanted to enact blue laws, so Mr Jones and crew first directed them to a literal reading of Exodus 20, and then when the politicians switched to walling off Saturdays instead of Sundays, convinced them to - if there is such a word - deshrine religious holidays in the law: make sure that none were enforced, all were permitted.

From your tone, you would like to outlaw what you see as religion, which would in reality be outlawing every religion but one: Atheism. Let's put this another way: you would make Atheism the State Religion as the Religious Right would make a concensus "Christianity" the State Religion.

Not only is Atheism a social disaster (France tried it, along with China and the USSR, North Korea and numerous others; go read the dismal record if you want to get depressed), but it's actually being done by stealth all across Western society as we type, using the exact same Constitutional provision intended to prevent it. The Religious Right is both a reaction to this and an excuse for it. If they get their way, we'll be living in a Puritan state, re-living the Dark Ages. If they don't, we'll be reliving Lenin's purges. The end of both their actions or yours will be a disaster, either way.

What we really need is to properly enforce the Constitution. To do this, simply formally recognise Atheism as a religion and enforce the existing no-religious-preferences rules rigorously. That would both starve the Religious Right of fuel by removing an excuse to react, and begin to remove the existing shackles from science. Scientists today are forced to ensure that their work fits within Materialist (Atheist) dogma, or face systematic attack from powerful religious forces. Without that handicap, they'd be free to explore a lot more options.

michael:

"It's hard to believe that the WSJ is equating prominently disclosed campaign consulting with secret payments from the U.S. Government treasury to TV personalities in order to promote Republican policies, but they are."

The Wall Street Journal Best of the Web column:

"The Dean campaign, unlike the Education Department, didn't spend tax dollars. But the bloggers who benefited from its largesse appear to be as compromised ethically as Williams."

I could find no statement in the Wall Street Journal equating the two scandals, notably in the article which michael links. The editorial opinion expressed in the Journal in fact does not equate the scandals, rather it points to a prominent difference between the two: the use of tax dollars.

Think freedom is great, except when it comes to economics? Think the free market capitalist pigs will be their own downfall? The wall street journal recently published a list of countries and sorted them by their level of economic freedom.

Policy makers who pay lip service to fighting poverty would do well to grasp the link between economic freedom and prosperity. This year the Index finds that the freest economies have a per-capita income of $29,219, more than twice that of the "mostly free" at $12,839, and more than four times that of the "mostly unfree." Put simply, misery has a cure and its name is economic freedom

Economic freedom allows countries to prosper. Sometimes at the expense of certain industries (ie programming) however, the competition and lower prices for goods mean that people (and companies) will be able to pay less for software and more for employees.

When bush protected ~5000 steel jobs a couple of years ago, it cost more than 20,000 auto industry jobs due to the increased cost of steel.

Anyway, to promote freedom in general, we have to respect the rights of employers as well as the rights of employees

Think freedom is great, except when it comes to economics? Think the free market capitalist pigs will be their own downfall? The wall street journal recently published a list of countries and sorted them by their level of economic freedom.

Policy makers who pay lip service to fighting poverty would do well to grasp the link between economic freedom and prosperity. This year the Index finds that the freest economies have a per-capita income of $29,219, more than twice that of the "mostly free" at $12,839, and more than four times that of the "mostly unfree." Put simply, misery has a cure and its name is economic freedom

Economic freedom allows countries to prosper. Sometimes at the expense of certain industries (ie programming) however, the competition and lower prices for goods mean that people (and companies) will be able to pay less for software and more for employees.

When bush protected ~5000 steel jobs a couple of years ago, it cost more than 20,000 auto industry jobs due to the increased cost of steel.

Anyway, to promote freedom in general, we have to respect the rights of employers as well as the rights of employees

In 1982, Saddam's workers began reconstructing Babylon's most imposing building, the 600-room palace of King Nebuchadnezzar II. Archaeologists were horrified. Many said that to rebuild on top of ancient artifacts does not preserve history, but disfigures it. The original bricks, which rise two or three feet from the ground, bear ancient inscriptions praising Nebuchadnezzar. Above these, Saddam Hussein's workers laid more than 60-million sand-colored bricks inscribed with the words, "In the era of Saddam Hussein, protector of Iraq, who rebuilt civilization and rebuilt Babylon." The new bricks began to crack after only ten years.

Prior to the Persian Gulf War, archaeologists working in Iraq were forced to close down excavations when Iraq's August invasion of Kuwait made the situation to dangerous to continue....

And following the war, looting of archaeological sites increased dramatically as Iraq's impoverished citizens used sometimes desperate means to make money in light of the economic sanctions placed on Iraq by the western world.

...In early February 1991, for example, Saddam parked MiG fighter jets at a Babylonian ziggurat at Ur to deter coalition forces from disabling them during the Gulf War. By Nineveh, the ancient capital of the Assyrian empire, he built air bases and weapons factories. According to archaeological scholars from the University of Chicago, an 80-foot mound containing many ruins of ancient Nineveh also housed an oil storage tank. During the Iran-Iraq war, Saddam used the site for anti-aircraft batteries because it was the most elevated spot in the area....

In contrast, at the height of the bombing campaign the Pentagon produced aerial photographs of the Al-Basrah mosque. They showed clearly that the Iraqis had destroyed the mosque for propaganda purposes. While coalition forces had bombed a target some 100 yards away, leaving the mosque unscathed, Iraqi engineers sliced off the dome in the hope of duping journalists that the U.S. had been responsible for the destruction.

And the UN helped. Now before I get modded, PLEASE read this.

http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/cRosett/? id=110005904/

and

http://pittsburghlive.com/x/tribune-review/middlee astreports/s_273762.html/

I started hearing a calm, resonable [sic], and powerful head-voice saying things like "Kerry doesn't have the experience we need in these troubled times." and "Give Bush a chance to make it better."

Anyone who knows me KNOWS these are not my thoughts!

And besides, I voted last week. No, there's no way in Hades these are my thoughts.

Gods-damn it! The f---ing Republicans have got Magical help pumping out a clear, unified, focused broadcast, and you can be sure, every sensitive is picking it up. These are the people most likely to vote Kerry, and I'd like to think they are resolute enough not to be swayed by telepathic subliminal advertising, but it's such a rarely-done thing, and so few people are properly trained these days, that I fear it will be more effective. Just watch and see who says "I was going to vote for Kerry, but for some reason I changed my mind at the last minute."

Who would be doing this for them? Gee, who are the Mages driving around in those black Mercedes and Lincolns with the tinted windows? The ones who live in the mansions with the hell-hounds in the yard and the 7-foot tall hairless black doormen? Every town has some, the bigger the town, the more of these "High Magi" you will find.

I have no idea what their agenda may be, but you can be damn sure the welfare of the common human on the street is not a part of it.

Bush isn't the radical you make him out to be, and it's not as if you liked us before.

Thus, to hell with you.

John Fund of the Wall Street Journal has an excellent article today about how the election results are going to play out, hour by hour. He tells you what states are going to close their polls at what time, and discusses what are the key races and key factors in the election around the country. Great read.

We have discovered dozens of WMD-related program activities and significant amounts of equipment that Iraq concealed from the United Nations during the inspections that began in late 2002. The discovery of these deliberate concealment efforts have come about both through the admissions of Iraqi scientists and officials concerning information they deliberately withheld and through physical evidence of equipment and activities that ISG has discovered that should have been declared to the UN. Let me just give you a few examples of these concealment efforts, some of which I will elaborate on later:

# A clandestine network of laboratories and safehouses within the Iraqi Intelligence Service that contained equipment subject to UN monitoring and suitable for continuing CBW research.

# A prison laboratory complex, possibly used in human testing of BW agents, that Iraqi officials working to prepare for UN inspections were explicitly ordered not to declare to the UN.

# Reference strains of biological organisms concealed in a scientist's home, one of which can be used to produce biological weapons.

# New research on BW-applicable agents, Brucella and Congo Crimean Hemorrhagic Fever (CCHF), and continuing work on ricin and aflatoxin were not declared to the UN.

Look familiar?

Before you put words in my mouth let me back it up. That's the problem with people like you, you have lots of glib but content-free comebacks that take little or no effort, but you have nothing to offer to the discussion.

Here are a few quotes I found with Google, but there's much more out there if you dig a little:

http://www.michigan.gov/mcsc/0,1607,7-137-6118_117 35-35396--,00.html

Excerpt:

Some variation in volunteering rates emerged by political affiliation, with higher rates for Republicans (58.6%) than for Democrates (48.5%) or Independents (47.9%).

http://www.researchatlanta.org/FullReports/01_Phil anthropyPatterns.pdf

Excerpt:

Republicans give and volunteer more than Democrats and those who did not identify a political affiliation.

http://www.opinionjournal.com/taste/?id=110004271
http://www.catalogueforphilanthropy.org/cfp/db/gen erosity.php?year=2003

Excerpt:

[T]he resulting index shows that the top 20 states all went for George W. Bush in the 2000 election--while 15 of the 20 least generous went for Al Gore.

Of course, I could just make stuff up, because I'm sure you are perfectly content to remain in your smug ignorance.

The Washington Post had an interesting article today. Here it is. It's basically a critique of Bush's tax cuts.

It all boils down to this: Bush wanted lower taxes. He lowered all the brackets that were in effect in 2000 and added a 10% bracket (details and comparisons can be found here). This ends up 'costing' the nation money, because the revenue that would have come from the additional taxes isn't going to be there. Whenever you see 'Bush's tax cut cost $X.YZ billion over 10 years', that's what it means. Also, some tax cuts are temporary. Congress passes them for a window, say 10 years, and then they have to be made permanent down the road.

Clinton presided over a ridiculous boom in the economy, one that caused the market to surge and provided us with a surplus. When I got out of school in 2000, I was coming into the job market at the tail end of the boom. People were handing out jobs like candy, and salaries were ridiculous. It's debatable what caused that surge to end, but it had to. If you look at numbers, and I don't have any handy, but looking at the numbers from the first part of 2001 on (when Bush was innaugurated), it's pretty clear that everything had slowed down and was continuing to slow down. September 11th happened, more bad news for the economy. Whenever stuff like that happens, the markets get shaken up and tend to go down.

Additionally, there is a tax loophole that allows multinational corporations to shift tax burdens around and decrease the amount of taxes they pay in this country. Some people claim this leads to outsourcing, since it's cheaper for them to pay workers in other countries, claim profits across multiple countries yet still claim expenses here. This article is a little lengthy but explains that more.

Jobs aren't really part of the job of president, but unemployment is seen as a bad thing. The president (really, him combined with congress) can only "promote" job growth by giving companies tax credits for new hires, or by reducing their tax burden or by making it more profitable to hire people here rather than other countries (ie, outsourcing). Kerry's economic plan (read it here) wants to drop that loophole above and use it to give corporations a 5% cut in corporate taxes (that's important...not all companies PAY corporate taxes, only about 8% do). He also wants to give a two-year new jobs tax credit to companies.

If you're a Kerry supporter, Bush has a net loss of jobs, is running a deficit because he cut taxes for the rich (he cut the top tax bracket from 39.5% to 35%, saying last week on O'Reilly "Nobody should pay more than 35% in taxes") and is a spendthrift on the war.

If you like Bush, a lot of this was bound to happen anyways. The war is contentious, obviously, but tax cuts are typically viewed favorably by Republicans because money back for everyone is a good thing.

That's my take on the economy. And as a caveat, I'm a Bush supporter. I don't think Kerry has the money to enact half the things he wants. If you look at his website, he wants a "Pay as you go" policy, which means that if he gives a 5% tax cut for corporations totalling $12billion over 10 years, we need to cut something or raise taxes so that it's on the books...no deficit spending. It's a great idea...it also rarely gets talked about in his speeches and, to me, sounds like a cop out so that next year he can say "The Republican Congress wouldn't reduce spending here, so I can't give you health care like I promised. Sorry."

--trb

Perhaps the reason that the Dems are getting lawyer'd up is that they feel (as do a lot of Americans) that the Republicans stole the last election?

Key word: feel. It isn't a fact that the Republicans stole the election, that is how the Democrats and liberals feel. No doubt that is connected to their present practice of the politics of rage and hate. They keep repeating the mantra, and many lie about the facts. That is what paints them in a bad light.

They keep saying the Al Gore won the "popular vote", which from a Constitutional perspective is irrelevant at the national level. The relevant measure is the Electoral College. Playing up the popular vote is intended to confuse people, and whip up resentment, the feeling that they were cheated when that isn't really the case under the current Constitituion..

They keep repeating the myth that the Black vote was suppressed, which is false. This is inteded to whip up resentment and inflame racial politics.

They keep bringing up problems with the mechanics of voting, which are genuine, but falsely attribute them to the Republicans. Many of the worst problems occured in counties run by Democrats.

I think that there is also an element of wounded pride in their behavior. How could we, the enlightened, the educated, the better people, lose to a .. cowboy, a texan. How could this happen to Al Gore... to us?

The Democrats and liberals felt entitled to winning the Presidency. When they lost, they felt betrayed. It was made worse by the unusual, but legitimate, nature of the loss.

Now there are incidents in about a half dozen states of thugs connected to the Democrats or leftist causes storming state Republican offices. Shots have been fired into at least two.

If George Bush wins again, I hope it is by a big margin to put an end to the nonsense. Otherwise, who knows what will happen? Riot? Mass protests? Spike in valium prescriptions? Who knows.

In June 2001, following a six-month investigation that included subpoenas of Florida state officials from Governor Jeb Bush on down, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights issued a report that found no evidence of voter intimidation, no evidence of voter harassment, and no evidence of intentional or systematic disenfranchisement of black voters.

Headed by a fiercely partisan Democrat, Mary Frances Berry, the Commission was very critical of Florida election officials (many of whom were Democrats). For example, "Potential voters confronted inexperienced poll workers, antiquated machinery, inaccessible polling locations, and other barriers to being able to exercise their right to vote." But the report found no basis for the contention that officials conspired to disenfranchise voters. "Moreover," it said, "even if it was foreseeable that certain actions by officials led to voter disenfranchisement, this alone does not mean that intentional discrimination occurred," let alone racial discrimination.

The Justice Department's Civil Rights Division conducted a separate investigation of these charges and also came up empty. In a May 2002 letter to Democratic Senator Pat Leahy of Vermont, who at the time headed the Judiciary Committee, Assistant Attorney General Ralph Boyd wrote, "The Civil Rights Division found no credible evidence in our investigations that Floridians were intentionally denied their right to vote during the November 2000 election."

Peter Kirsanow, a Republican member of the Civil Rights Commission, told us in an interview that "the press has tried to spin what happened in Florida into something sinister. But there's a disconnect between what was actually found [in these various investigations] and how it's been portrayed."

Well, yeah, he "admitted" that. Saddam's goal was to control oil in the region and to dominate his neighbors; to do that he had to project a tough guy appearance. So he "admitted" to the world that he was a big nasty scary man who had thousands of liters of every nasty thing you can imagine in an attempt to give the impression that he posed a severe threat, so that the world would take him seriously.
He also told the UN that he was in full accordance with UN resolutions. You shouldn't expect consistency from a power-mad dictator. Saddam's weapons scientists told him that they were making great strides in increasing Iraq's might through WMDs, when in fact Iraq's third-world-level funding, the internally hostile nature of the regime, and UN weapons inspections were all preventing any real progress. To back this up, check the Kay Report. Charles Duelfer, David Kay's replacement, expected to find evidence of active weapons or at least active weapons systems. Yet still Duelfer's report speaks only of "regime intent" to construct buildings to facilitate weapons programs, and Bush is left with the mouthful "weapons of mass destruction-related program activities."

Also, you might want to look into what Hans Blix had to say.