Guaranteed to make you think, make you laugh, or make you mad. I'm happy with any of the three.
WSJ: U.S. retailers sold 415,000 albums by Michael Jackson in the four days following his death last week.I'll bet they haven't sold that much OxiClean.
WSJ: In addition, Michael Jackson sold more than 2.3 million digitally downloaded songs since his death.
"I think it will be refreshing having at least one senator who admits he is a comedian."
Former Minnesota Sen. Norm Coleman conceded Tuesday to Democrat Al Franken, after the Supreme Court ruled that Franken should be certified the winner of November's Senate race.Democrats are undoubtedly rubbing their hands in glee at the thought of a super majority in the Senate. However, neither Senator Kennedy nor Senator Byrd appear to be in shape to cast any important votes, so even with full Dem support they'll be two votes shy of stopping filibusters."I just had a conversation with Al Franken congratulating him on his victory," Coleman told reporters, outside his home in St. Paul. "The Supreme Court of Minnesota has spoken. I respect its decision and I will abide by its result."
He said he has no "regrets" about his months-long legal challenge but that he no longer wants to press it.
Michael Jackson's body will be taken to his Neverland Ranch in Santa Barbara County for a public viewing to be held Friday, CNN reported Tuesday.Hwy 101 is going to be such a mess. If you live in Santa Barbara - GET OUT!
The body will be taken to the ranch on Thursday, the cable news station reported, but no further details on the viewing have been released yet. A private memorial service will held Sunday.
The Associated Press reports that Santa Barbara County officials are in a meeting about Michael Jackson plans, and E! Online is reporting they are discussing a possible memorial service at Neverland Ranch.
Lt. Butch Arnoldi tells E!: “Our guys are meeting as we speak with the California Highway Patrol to discuss the security issues.”
Santa Barbara County Fire spokesman Capt. David Sadecki confirmed to The Associated Press that fire officials, California Highway Patrol and county sheriffs officials were meeting Tuesday morning to discuss “the whole Michael Jackson thing.”
“The Santa Barbara County Fire Department is willing to accommodate the Jackson family with whatever request they have regarding a funeral procession should they have one,” Sadecki told The Associated Press.
Sitting in a Durham County jail cell, Frank M. Lombard, the Duke University researcher accused of offering his adopted 5-year-old son for sex, awaits a trip to Washington, D.C., this week to face federal criminal charges.
After waiving an extradition hearing Friday morning, he was locked in the Durham jail Saturday without bail.
Federal authorities say Lombard, 42, of 24 Indigo Creek Trail, performed sexual acts on his son and invited an undercover investigator online to fly to North Carolina and do the same.
Lombard owns the home with another man, according to Durham County property records. The pair bought the home, which sits at the end of a narrow path lined with trees and multicolored homes, in May 2007, the records show. The co-owner has not been accused of any wrongdoing.
A bag of baseball equipment, a pair of tennis rackets, a skateboard and a child's bike lay on the home's front porch Saturday. No one answered the door as a dog barked inside.
Lombard, associate director of Duke's Center for Health Policy, was arrested Wednesday evening at his home. Investigators seized two webcams, five computers and a sex toy, among other items, after searching his home.
The 5-year-old and another child in the home were placed in protective custody.
Lombard has not faced a criminal charge but has speeding infractions and other driving offenses.
Lombard, a licensed clinical social worker with a master's degree in social work, is a health-disparities researcher who studies HIV/AIDS in the rural South.
Man charged for spraying wife with garden hose for smoking...Hey, if my wife was on fire I'd try to put her out.
U.S. consumer confidence took an unexpectedly steep slide in June, figures released on Tuesday showed, suggesting the 18-month-long recession had yet to loosen its grip on the economy.George Soros' entire investment strategy is based on continued economic troubles. No wonder he's talking the economy down.
A separate report on April house prices in major cities offered some encouraging signs that the worst of the housing slump may be over, but that was not enough to lift investors' spirits, while another crop of economic data showed business activity in New York City and the Midwest remained weak and retail chains slogged through a rough June.
Billionaire investor George Soros added to the cautionary tone, saying fears of inflation would drive up borrowing costs and choke off growth once financial markets recover.
Major stock market indexes turned lower after the Conference Board's consumer confidence index showed households felt gloomier about their current situation, and less optimistic about the eventual economic recovery.
Kevin Kruszenski, head of listed trading at Keybanc Capital Markets in Cleveland, said the confidence data "kind of took the wind out of things a little bit."
The confidence index fell to 49.3 in June from 54.8 in May. Economists polled by Reuters had expected a healthier reading of 55.0 for this month.
Republicans believe a handful of junior House Democrats may have taken a career-ending vote by supporting the controversial energy bill last week and are planning to launch an ad campaign in targeted districts to try to seal their fate.Private businesses are getting into the act as well. Gateway Pundit has the story of a local bakery company that's running messages on their electronic signs blasting a local congressman whose vote may put them out of business.
The National Republican Congressional Committee is planning to air TV and radio commercials and unleash robocalls against Democrats who hail from districts that could be adversely affected by the narrowly passed legislation, are GOP-leaning or both.
Those likely to find themselves with targets on their back after the 219-212 vote: freshman Reps. Harry Teague of New Mexico, Betsy Markey of Colorado, John Boccieri of Ohio, Thomas Perriello of Virginia and Alan Grayson of Florida and second-termer Zack Space of Ohio.
The GOP’s hope is do to these vulnerable Democrats what Republicans famously did to former Rep. Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky, the Pennsylvania Democrat who ensured that her career was limited to one term when she cast the deciding vote for President Bill Clinton’s budget package in 1993.
“There’s a reason why over 40 Democrats in swing districts voted against this,” said NRCC spokesman Ken Spain. “They realized that voting for [Speaker Nancy] Pelosi’s bill wasn’t worth the price of millions of dollars in TV ads that would be required to put up what will ultimately be a futile defense of this vote. The question is: What were the others thinking?”
Execs are also considering honouring all the dates by putting a DIGITAL Jacko on stage.Well, I guess that's better the stuffing him and propping him up on stage.
The source said: "A highly technical version of MJ as a silhouette performing on stage has been discussed.
"It is possible to create an impression that Michael is actually there, giving fans a place to mourn and celebrate his music."
The insider added: "Executives are keen that they do go ahead."
Nanny State: White House announces new lighting standards...The government doesn't think you're capable of making any good decisions on your own.
FDA may put restrictions on Tylenol
"That's what you get… for breaking into my house."Yep. I'm not sure what was said in the part the newspaper removed from the quote but I imagine it was colorful.
In a written message to supporters Monday, Mark Sanford asserted that God’s plan for him includes finishing his term as South Carolina governor.If Sanford's national ambitions weren't completely shot before this, I'm pretty sure they're toast now.
Sanford is facing calls for his resignation after disappearing to Argentina then returning last week to admit an affair.
“Immediately after all this unfolded last week I had thought I would resign – as I believe in the military model of leadership and when trust of any form is broken one lays down the sword,” Sanford wrote in the message, which he posted on his personal website http://www.governorsanford.com and Facebook page, and broadcast via Twitter.
“A long list of close friends have suggested otherwise – that for God to really work in my life I shouldn’t be getting off so lightly. While it would be personally easier to exit stage left, their point has been that my larger sin was the sin of pride.”
Sanford writes that those friends asserted that “if I walked in with a real spirit of humility then this last legislative term could well be our most productive one - and that outside this term, I would ultimately be a better person and of more service in whatever doors God opened next in life if I stuck around to learn lessons rather than running and hiding down at the farm.”
Reston, VA - North Dakota and Montana have an estimated 3.0 to 4.3 billion barrels of undiscovered, technically recoverable oil in an area known as the Bakken Formation.
A U.S. Geological Survey assessment, released April 10, shows a 25-fold increase in the amount of oil that can be recovered compared to the agency's 1995 estimate of 151 million barrels of oil.
Technically recoverable oil resources are those producible using currently available technology and industry practices. USGS is the only provider of publicly available estimates of undiscovered technically recoverable oil and gas resources.
New geologic models applied to the Bakken Formation, advances in drilling and production technologies, and recent oil discoveries have resulted in these substantially larger technically recoverable oil volumes. About 105 million barrels of oil were produced from the Bakken Formation by the end of 2007.
The USGS Bakken study was undertaken as part of a nationwide project assessing domestic petroleum basins using standardized methodology and protocol as required by the Energy Policy and Conservation Act of 2000.
The Bakken Formation estimate is larger than all other current USGS oil assessments of the lower 48 states and is the largest "continuous" oil accumulation ever assessed by the USGS. A "continuous" oil accumulation means that the oil resource is dispersed throughout a geologic formation rather than existing as discrete, localized occurrences. The next largest "continuous" oil accumulation in the U.S. is in the Austin Chalk of Texas and Louisiana, with an undiscovered estimate of 1.0 billions of barrels of technically recoverable oil.
"It is clear that the Bakken formation contains a significant amount of oil - the question is how much of that oil is recoverable using today's technology?" said Senator Byron Dorgan, of North Dakota. "To get an answer to this important question, I requested that the U.S. Geological Survey complete this study, which will provide an up-to-date estimate on the amount of technically recoverable oil resources in the Bakken Shale formation."
So the House passed the Waxman-Markey climate-change bill. In political terms, it was a remarkable achievement. But 212 representatives voted no. A handful of these no votes came from representatives who considered the bill too weak, but most rejected the bill because they rejected the whole notion that we have to do something about greenhouse gases. And as I watched the deniers make their arguments, I couldn’t help thinking that I was watching a form of treason — treason against the planet.Yes, it's treason! Because if we don't do something NOW...well, nothing bad will happen since global warming ended in 1998 and isn't caused by man anyway.
Just in time for the 40th anniversary of the first moon landing, NASA may have found the long-lost original Apollo 11 videotapes.I hope they've got the tapes. It will be fun to relive that experience.
If true, as Britain's Sunday Express reports, the high-quality tapes may give us a whole new view of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin's lunar strolls.
Back on July 20, 1969, the raw video feed from the moon was beamed to the Parkes Observatory radio telescope in southeastern Australia, and then compressed and sent to Mission Control in Houston.
Because of technical issues, NASA's images couldn't be fed directly to the TV networks.
Instead, the grayish, blotchy images Americans saw on their TV sets were the result of a regular TV camera pointed at the huge wall monitor in Houston — a copy of a copy, in effect. (Australians saw slightly different footage.)
Those images survive, and anyone can see them on YouTube. But the original, sharp, black-and-white tapes that were recorded at Parkes vanished.
NASA had thought they'd been shipped to the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., But a search there a couple of years ago turned up nothing.
Around the same time, though, a cache of tapes containing data from moon-surface experiments from the entire Apollo program was discovered in a university basement in Perth, Western Australia, on the other side of the country from Parkes.
According to the Sunday Express, NASA has combed through those tapes and found the original Apollo 11 video footage.
"We're talking about the same tapes," an unnamed NASA spokesman told the newspaper, though he added that "at this point, I'm not prepared to discuss what has or has not been found."
What does a president get from a gay audience when he’s publicly against gay marriage, unwilling to take bold action to repeal “don’t ask, don’t tell,” and so terrified of the political consequences of challenging the Defense of Marriage Act that he’ll actually defend it in court? Why, he gets “thunderous applause,” of course — if he’s a Democrat. I’ll be charitable and assume that this audience isn’t representative of all gays demanding equal rights, that they’re a handpicked bunch of chumps congregated to cheer The One on no matter how many promises he breaks. The alternative is too depressing to consider.Apparently abuse at the hands of others is something those people enjoy.
Money line: “We’ve been in office six months now. I suspect that by the time this administration is over, I think you guys will have pretty good feelings about the Obama administration.” Translation: Elect me to a second term so I can be the hardcore liberal I am without worrying about the electoral consequences. Exit question: How come a guy with huge majorities in both houses of Congress can’t get any of this stuff done now?
The man behind the world's biggest online Michael Jackson fan club has said heartbroken followers of the star have committed suicide because of his death.
Gary Taylor, president and owner of MJJcommunity.com, said he understood the tragedies had mostly taken place outside of the UK but he believed one may have been British.I don't think we wanted those people reproducing anyway.
"I know there has been an increase, I now believe the figure is 12. I believe there may have been one Briton who has taken their life," he said.
The White House came to the defense of President Obama's pick to be the newest Supreme Court justice after Judge Sonia Sotomayor's ruling in a racially charged case was reversed by the Supreme Court.I will agree with one thing - it was quite fashionable in legal circles to allow racism against white men, but that didn't make it right.
White House press secretary Robert Gibbs all but accused the current court of "judicial activism," a buzz term used by conservatives in recent years, in overturning what the White House saw as Sotomayor's upholding of precedent.
The highest court ruled Monday that a group of white firefighters in New Haven, Conn. were discriminated against after the city threw out a promotion test after one Hispanic and no African-Americans passed. Sotomayor ruled in favor of the city as an appeals court judge.
Republicans on Monday sought to use the case to question Sotomayor's qualifications and buy more time before her confirmation hearings are set to begin on July 13.
But Gibbs said that the case "denotes that [Sotomayor] is a follower of precedent," and the arguments over judicial activism "seem to be at the very least upside-down in this case."
Gibbs said the case proves "she doesn't legislate from the bench."
"I think it is an interesting new interpretation of a law that has been reviewed by many judges in many courts, judges appointed by Democrats and Republicans."
"We will not obey the Supreme Court. The court which only imparts justice for the powerful, the rich, and the bankers, only causes problems for democracy."I'll bet you thought it was Barack Obama. He has said much the same thing about various other institutions.
Earlier this year, Congress passed a “Stimulus” Bill. It was 973 pages long. This past Friday, the House passed a “Climate Change” Bill. It was more than 1200 pages long.It should be a Federal crime for any Representative or Senator to vote on a bill he or she hasn't read. And I'd take it one step further - before they can vote they have to pass a 10 question quiz demonstrating they not only read the bill but understand what they read.
This got me wondering: how long, exactly, is our Constitution? How many pages did it take our country’s founders to lay out the structure and functions of our Federal Government?
Easy to answer. I found the Constitution online and copied it into a Word document, in Times New Roman 12 point type. So how long is it?
Including the preamble, all signatures and all 27 amendments, it’s 20 pages.
Without the signatures and amendments, it’s 11 pages.
Think about that. The entire foundation of our country - the complete design for our entire government — is clearly explained in only 11 pages.
No single Amendment is a full page. Many are only a single sentence.
Yet the bill that was passed on June 26, 2009 by 219 of our elected representatives — people to whom we’ve entrusted our Constitution, men and women who have sworn an oath to uphold it - was more than 1200 pages long. That’s over 100 times longer than the U.S. Constitution! And not one member of Congress, NOT ONE, read the whole thing!
A word comes to my mind to describe this: “INSANE.”
I cannot believe that this type of legislation and legislative behavior is what the signers of our Constitution intended when they invented Congress.
Therefore, I am respectfully proposing a 28th Amendment to our Constitution. I call it the Brevity Act.
No law, bill, resolution or any act of Congress shall exceed 2000 words, including all footnotes, amendments and signatures. Congress shall not vote on any item longer than that. Each item requiring a vote shall be read aloud in its entirety in session to a majority of members. Those not in attendance may not vote on the item.
2000 words is about 5 single spaced pages in a 12 point Word document. If it’s longer than that, then it’s too complicated to be a single law or bill, so it must either be cut or turned into multiple bills, each requiring a separate vote.
Furthermore, a Brevity Act should be part of every State Constitution, County Charter and City Charter.
To those who would oppose this Act because it would require Legislatures to vote separately on every single item in the budget, I say, it’s about time!
Talk about a lack of piety. Long Island cops say they've caught a woman robbing congregants during church.This happens more often than you'd think. I used to have a client who had a problem like this one Sunday morning. The choir was in the sanctuary for the service, but the ladies had left their purses in the choir room. Somebody got in there and cleaned them all out.
Patricia Adams saw an opportunity during services at Our Lady of Hope Catholic Church – and it wasn't for worship. While a devout parishioner knelt down in prayer, the 46-year-old learned over a church pew and stole cash from her purse, police said. An usher saw her do it and called the cops.
Cops arrested Adams as she left the church yesterday morning. They recovered the stolen goods and returned them to the unsuspecting victim.
This wasn't the first time Adams lifted money off a hapless worshipper, however. In May, the Westbury woman jacked cash from a purse left on a pew by a woman who was receiving communion, cops said.
The U.S. Supreme Court today ordered a new round of oral arguments in Citizens United v. FEC, the “Hillary: The Movie” case. The Court wants parties to address whether Austin v. Michigan, a case that bans certain political speech by corporations, including nonprofit corporations such as Citizens United, should be overturned. The Court also wants to consider whether part of McConnell v. FEC, upholding the so-called “electioneering communications” ban in McCain-Feingold, should likewise be overturned and the ban struck down entirely.I would love to see McCain-Feingold struck down. To me there's no question that the bill imposed unconstitutional restrictions on free political speech and only has served to protect the interests of incumbents.
“The Court has set up a blockbuster case about Americans’ First Amendment rights to join together and speak freely about politics,” said Steve Simpson, a senior attorney with the Institute for Justice, which filed a friend-of-the-court brief in Citizens United v. FEC. “A majority of the High Court appears to recognize the grave threat to free speech posed by both the electioneering communications ban in McCain-Feingold and the ban on corporate political speech. This case could mark a significant advance for First Amendment rights and will have major implications for state laws nationwide.” . . .
The Citizens United case came about because the Federal Election Commission banned the airing of “Hillary: The Movie,” produced by the nonprofit Citizens United, on cable TV and required the group to “name names” of the film’s backers by disclosing to the government detailed personal information about donors if the group ran TV ads for the film. At oral argument, justices appeared concerned that if the government could ban corporate-funded films about candidates, it could also ban books. Revisiting Austin and McConnell allows the Court to fully consider whether speech regulation has gone too far.
The Supreme Court’s ruling this morning on the New Haven firefighters’ lawsuit is a reminder of the vital role a sane majority on the high court plays in protecting the rights of citizens against the dictates of liberal ideology.Even if Sonia Sotomayor is confirmed the balance of the court will remain unchanged. However, should one of the holy five decide to call it quits, we're all in big trouble.
The 5-4 ruling, which reverses a decision endorsed by Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor, validated the complaints of a group of firefighters who took and passed a promotion test but wound up being told that the exam was invalid because no minorities had done well enough on it. Though no one could credibly allege that the test was biased or that any discrimination had actually taken place, the city of New Haven threw out the test (thus rendering the efforts of the firefighters who had passed it worthless) because they feared that they would nonetheless be sued by the affirmative action bar, which views any result other than the one sought for minorities as inherently discriminatory.
Sotomayor and the Second Federal Circuit majority that dismissed the firefighters appeal didn’t even bother to state their reasons for their egregious and unconstitutional approval of this outrage. But fortunately there are still five members of the Supreme Court who aren’t willing to go along with such travesties.
How did the four members of the minority justify their dissent? Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote that the white firefighters “understandably attract this court’s sympathy. But they had no vested right to promotion.” This is nonsense. Having jumped through every hoop that the city of New Haven set for them, the firefighters were entitled to the promotions that they had fairly earned in open competition. Denying them these promotions, merely because they were neither black nor Hispanic, is inherently discriminatory. Such reverse discrimination has become commonplace in recent decades, but it is still a disgrace when our courts seek to rationalize such naked racialism through the sort of convoluted reasoning put forward by Ginsburg.
The majority, led by that fickle weathervane Anthony Kennedy (thank goodness the wind was blowing in the right direction!), is to be commended for establishing a precedent that may curtail the widespread practice of officially endorsed discrimination.
But just as interesting is the insight this ruling brings to the question of Sotomayor’s nomination. The Senate is being asked to approve a person who was willing to endorse blatant discrimination motivated by race, albeit in the guise of remedying past discrimination even when no such discrimination is proved or even alleged.
Sotomayor will, when she is undoubtedly confirmed, replace David Souter, one of the justices who were willing to let the affirmative action mindset further erode American democracy. But the fact that her nomination will not undermine the narrow majority for reason is no cause for complacency. A doctrinaire liberal like Barack Obama can be counted on to put forward similar nominees in the next three to eight years. Anyone who cares about the future of the rule of law in this nation should not go to sleep tonight without saying a prayer for the continued good health of Justices Roberts, Scalia, Thomas, Alito, and Kennedy.
John McCain regularly accused then-candidate Barack Obama of being a tax-and-spend liberal, seeking to “spread the wealth” as Obama disclosed in a much regretted off-hand comment. Well, the spending promises were discarded instantaneously. He did not go “line-by-line” through the budget nor have we seen a net reduction in spending....Turns out the real Barack Obama IS the guy John McCain told us about. The media was dismissive of his accusations, and even tried to destroy Joe the Plumber who extracted the "spread the wealth" comment from Obama, but McCain was right the whole time.
Obama ran as a fiscal moderate — swearing affection for markets and promising only to tax the “rich.” The reality, just as McCain predicted, is quite different. The question remains whether the voters will notice and object to having been so blatantly deceived.
Vice President Biden announced today that Lynn Rosenthal will be the White House adviser on Violence Against Women, a new position created to work with the president and vice president on domestic violence and sexual assault issues...Why does the president need advice on violence against women? Aren't you either for it or against it? Doesn't seem like a lot of advice is really needed.
The Supreme Court ruled Monday that white firefighters in New Haven, Conn., were unfairly denied promotions because of their race, reversing a decision that high court nominee Sonia Sotomayor endorsed as an appeals court judge.
New Haven was wrong to scrap a promotion exam because no African-Americans and only two Hispanic firefighters were likely to be made lieutenants or captains based on the results, the court said Monday in a 5-4 decision. The city said that it had acted to avoid a lawsuit from minorities.
The ruling could alter employment practices nationwide and make it harder to prove discrimination when there is no evidence it was intentional.
"Fear of litigation alone cannot justify an employer's reliance on race to the detriment of individuals who passed the examinations and qualified for promotions," Justice Anthony Kennedy said in his opinion for the court. He was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.
In dissent, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said the white firefighters "understandably attract this court's sympathy. But they had no vested right to promotion. Nor have other persons received promotions in preference to them."
Justices Stephen Breyer, David Souter and John Paul Stevens signed onto Ginsburg's dissent, which she read aloud in court Monday.
Kennedy's opinion made only passing reference to the work of Sotomayor and the other two judges on the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals who upheld a lower court ruling in favor of New Haven.
But the appellate judges have been criticized for producing a cursory opinion that failed to deal with "indisputably complex and far from well-settled" questions, in the words of another appeals court judge, Sotomayor mentor Jose Cabranes.
"This perfunctory disposition rests uneasily with the weighty issues presented by this appeal," Cabranes said, in a dissent from the full 2nd Circuit's decision not to hear the case.
A surprising number of teenagers—nearly 15 percent—think they're going to die young, leading many to drug use, suicide attempts and other unsafe behavior, new research suggests.
The study, based on a survey of more than 20,000 kids, challenges conventional wisdom that says teens engage in risky behavior because they think they're invulnerable to harm. Instead, a sizable number of teens may take chances "because they feel hopeless and figure that not much is at stake," said study author Dr. Iris Borowsky, a researcher at the University of Minnesota.I always thought kids did dumb things because they thought they were bulletproof. Maybe not.
That behavior threatens to turn their fatalism into a self-fulfilling prophecy. Over seven years, kids who thought they would die early were seven time more likely than optimistic kids to be subsequently diagnosed with AIDS. They also were more likely to attempt suicide and get in fights resulting in serious injuries.
Borowsky said the magnitude of kids with a negative outlook was eye-opening.
Adolescence is "a time of great opportunity and for such a large minority of youth to feel like they don't have a long life ahead of them was surprising," she said.
The study suggests a new way doctors could detect kids likely to engage in unsafe behavior and potentially help prevent it, said Dr. Jonathan Klein, a University of Rochester adolescent health expert who was not involved in the research.
"Asking about this sense of fatalism is probably a pretty important component of one of the ways we can figure out who those kids at greater risk are," he said.
The first-ever scientific test on what are believed to be the remains of the Apostle Paul "seems to confirm" that they do indeed belong to the Roman Catholic saint, Pope Benedict XVI said Sunday.Is that sort of like the unanimous and uncontested tradition that man-made global warming is destroying the earth?
It was the second major discovery concerning St. Paul announced by the Vatican in as many days.
On Saturday, the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano announced the June 19 discovery of a fresco inside another tomb depicting St. Paul, which Vatican officials said represented the oldest known icon of the apostle.
Benedict said archaeologists recently unearthed and opened the white marble sarcophagus located under the Basilica of St. Paul's Outside the Walls in Rome, which for some 2,000 years has been believed by the faithful to be the tomb of St. Paul.
Benedict said scientists had conducted carbon dating tests on bone fragments found inside the sarcophagus and confirmed that they date from the first or second century.
"This seems to confirm the unanimous and uncontested tradition that they are the mortal remains of the Apostle Paul," Benedict said, announcing the findings at a service in the basilica to mark the end of the Vatican's Paoline year, in honor of the apostle.
A closely watched discrimination lawsuit by white firefighters who say they have unfairly been denied promotions is one of three remaining Supreme Court cases awaiting resolution Monday.The firefighter case will be particularly interesting. The court will have the opportunity to both slap down racial preferences, but will have a chance to slap down Sonia Sotomayor as well who did everything she could to keep this case from getting to the Supreme Court. I'll have more on the Court's final decision later today.
The court intends to finish its work for the summer that day, Chief Justice John Roberts said. The court also will say goodbye to Justice David Souter who has announced he will retire "when the court rises for the summer recess."
Sonia Sotomayor, nominated to take Souter's place, was one of three appeals court judges who ruled that officials in New Haven, Conn., acted properly in throwing out firefighters' promotions exams because of racially skewed results.
The city says it decided not to use the test scores to determine promotions because it might have been vulnerable to claims the exam had a "disparate impact" on minorities in violation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The white firefighters said the decision violated the same law's prohibition on intentional discrimination.
The opinion that Sotomayor endorsed has been criticized as a cursory look at a tough issue. Among the critics are fellow judges on the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York. Her defenders have said the short opinion properly applied earlier cases from that appeals court.
The outcome of the case could alter how employers in both the public and private sectors make job-related decisions.
The other two unsettled cases involve campaign finance law and states' ability to investigate alleged discrimination in lending by national banks.
A record-shattering vinyl album and its moonwalking maestro. A paper poster of a golden-haired beauty in a one-piece swimsuit that was gossamer and clingy in all the right places.There's more here. He makes some good points.
It all seems so quaint now, the fragmented dream memories of a fleeting micro-era that began with words like "bicentennial" and "pet rock" and ended with MTV, Atari and absurdly thin cans of super-hold mousse.
The man-child named Michael Jackson and the luminous girl known as Farrah Fawcett-Majors jumped into our consciousness at a plastic moment in American culture - a time when the celebrity juggernaut we know today was still in diapers. When they departed Thursday, just a few hours and a few miles apart, they left an entire generation - a very strange generation indeed - without two of its defining figures.
"These people were on our lunchboxes," said Gary Giovannetti, 38, a manager at HBO who grew up on Long Island awash in Farrah and MJ iconography. "This," he said, "is the moment when Generation X realizes they're grown up."
It was a long time coming. Cynical, disaffected, rife with ADD, lost between Boomers and millennials and sandwiched between Vietnam and the war on terror, Gen X has always been an oddity. It was the product of a transitional age when we were still putting people on celebrity pedestals but only starting to make an industry out of dragging them down.
Its memorable moments were diffuse and confusing - the Ronald Reagan assassination attempt, the dawn of AIDS, the explosion of the Space Shuttle Challenger. It had no protest movement, no opponent to unite it, none of the things that typically shape the ill-defined beast we call an American generation.
These were the people who sent to the top of the charts a song called "We Don't Need Another Hero," then figured out how to churn them out wholesale, launching the celebrity obsession that is now an accepted part of American cultural fabric.
And that was personified nowhere better than in the two people who died Thursday.
Michael Jackson was working on a song about climate change in the days before his death, his friend Deepak Chopra has disclosed.Well, he's done something about climate change now. He's reduced his carbon footprint to zero, and he didn't even have to buy any of Al Gore's carbon indulgences to do it.
Q: How do you think conservative talk radio has affected the Legislature’s work?Uh...no.
A: The Republicans were essentially threatened and terrorized against voting for revenue. Now [some] are facing recalls. They operate under a terrorist threat: “You vote for revenue and your career is over.” I don’t know why we allow that kind of terrorism to exist. I guess it’s about free speech, but it’s extremely unfair.
The Internet was built to withstand nuclear attack. That was why it was built in the ’60s in the first place, as a communications system with redundancy built in so that the military could communicate even if one of the nodes went down.
We saw some of that happen today, as news of Michael Jackson’s death spread like wildfire through the Internet. TMZ.com got the scoop about Jackson being sent to the hospital. But the site went down from the surge of traffic. The LA Times reported he was in a coma, but then that site went down too. The LA Times managed to report that Jackson was dead, and then everyone else started buzzing about it. Twitter went down. Keynote Systems, which measures web site performance, said that the following sites all slowed significantly: ABC, AOL, LA Times, CNN Money and CBS. Starting at 230 pm PST, the average load time for a news site slowed from 4 seconds to 9 seconds.
This is not supposed to happen....There's more information in the story about attempts the industry has taken to handle large volumes of traffic.
And yet networks still buckle under the weight of traffic when something like today’s events shakes the whole world. Mobile networks are particularly weak, as AT&T’s activation problems related to the launch of the iPhone 3G S showed. In some ways, the servers worked today. As one site went down, another picked up the torch. But the transitions were rocky. The promise of utility computing is that you will be able to switch on and off server capacity as if you were switching on and off your lights.
And that leads me to consider the future. As tragic as Michael Jackson’s death is, it’s only a small taste of what would happen in a true calamity. If the servers go down, how are we going to get our Gmail or Yahoo Mail? Who will be there to listen when we collectively Tweet for help? What will we do if the emergency plan is stored on the network?
It’s a wake-up call for the web, and for those who are building its infrastructure and plumbing for it.
Serving in the Reagan White House as a young lawyer, future Chief Justice John Roberts showed promise as a music critic in addition to his more obvious talents: "I hate to sound like one of Mr. [Michael] Jackson's records," Roberts wrote, "constantly repeating the same refrain..."Even back then Roberts had Jackson figured out.
Roberts feared sounding like a Michael Jackson record as he sought to prevent President Reagan from providing testimonial letters to be used by Jackson's public relations team. Roberts wanted to keep President Reagan from embarrassments such as this: "Your deep faith in God and adherence to traditional values are an inspiration to all of us, especially young people searching for something real to believe in."
Roberts also used a version of the lawyer's slippery slope argument against the Jackson public relations team's requests for a letter from President Reagan. Roberts warned against "the precedent that would be set by such a letter." He noted that the Washington Post was reporting that "some youngsters were turning away from Mr. Jackson in favor of a newcomer who goes by the name 'Prince,'" who was planning a Washington concert. The chief was right to be concerned, but Jackson himself was at the bottom of this particular slope.
White House senior adviser David Axelrod said the president won't rule out a health care reform bill that includes a middle-class tax hike.The argument from Obama is that health care, if unchecked by a government plan, will bankrupt the country. However, as Don Surber points out, government-run health care is already bankrupting the country:
"The president had said in the past that he doesn't believe taxing health care benefits at any level is necessarily the best way to go here. He still believes that," Axelrod told me on This Week, "But there are a number of formulations and we'll wait and see. The important thing at this point is to keep the process moving, to keep people at the table, to the keep the discussions going. We've gotten a long way down the road and we want to finish that journey."
I pressed Axelrod on whether Obama will draw a line in the sand and veto any bill that funds health care reform with tax hikes for people making under $250,000 a year -- despite a pledge Barack Obama made during the 2008 presidential campaign not to raise taxes on the poor and middle-class.
"One of the problems we've had in this town is that people draw lines in the sand and they stop talking to each other. And you don't get anything done. That's not the way the president approaches us. He is very cognizant of protecting people -- middle class people, hard-working people who are trying to get along in a very difficult economy. And he will continue to represent them in these talks," Axelrod said.
"But they're also dealing with punishing health care costs, and that's something that we have to deal with."
One of the oddities about nationalizing health insurance — through the cynical offering of a public option — is that government-run health insurance is already wrecking the budgets of the federal and state governments.All of Obama's promises have expiration dates. He's already passed a middle class tax hike in the form of the cap-and-tax bill (which hopefully will die in the Senate), so we know he's not shy about breaking the promise to middle class wage earners.
Entitlements wrecked the federal budget, where $2 of every $3 spent now goes to entitlements.
If you eliminated military spending and all other discretionary spending (federal courts, the White House — all that) the federal budget still would not balance.
Our seed corn is gone, gobbled by free Hoverounds for retirees, regardless of their wealth.
OK, that is an exaggeration. It’s not the Hoverounds. It’s the nursing homes, the public housing, the free rent for meth labs… good intentions pave the highway to hell.
And drain the treasury.
$1 of every $5 that states spend now goes to Medicaid and other state health programs. States are stuck. For every $1 they cut in Medicaid, up to $4 is cut because you lose the federal matching money.
President Lyndon Baines Johnson and a Democratic Congress really screwed the nation’s economy in 1965 by passing Medicare and Medicaid.
Barack Obama's staffers are getting a little too imperial for their boss' good.Brown describes Obama as "a royal pain". Power does that to people.
A year ago, when Obama was running for president, he appeared before the national convention of the NAACP and was a great hit. His biggest crowd-pleasing line was how much he was looking forward to coming back in a year as the first African American president. It got him a five-minute standing ovation and millions of votes.
Fast forward to this year. The NAACP invites the president to speak to the group July 16, the last day of its six-day convention at the Hilton in New York.
The White House's response: Absolutely, he's coming.
Then the Secret Service comes and says, "No," the Hilton is not suitable.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg says, "Why don't I give you Yankee Stadium?" It would be the president's biggest event since his inauguration.
A couple of days later comes the answer from someone in Obama's operation: We don't want to project that kind of image. We want something bigger than the Hilton, but not as big as Yankee Stadium.
The NAACP people have to bust their ass to come up with another place - and they do, finally, finding an armory in Harlem. There's no air conditioning, however, and we are talking New York in July here. The governor steps in and says he'll provide temporary air conditioning.
The White House then says, "OK, but we want to change the time - 2 p.m. for the president's speech is not acceptable anymore. We want 5 o'clock."
The NAACP says, wait a minute - this speech is supposed to take place on the biggest day of the convention, the day we hold the awards banquet. If Obama goes on at 5 p.m., we'll have to bus hundreds of people from the downtown Hilton all the way up to Harlem, two or three hours before the president arrives. Then we'll have to bus everyone back and get everyone into their black ties for the awards dinner.
We can't do that.
So those little bitty people in the NAACP send back the message: Advise him that it's 2 o'clock and we hope he shows.
Reuters: Ecuador says it will not recognize any new government after Honduras coup.Of course not, they've got all new guys. I can hear the conversation now:
Equadorian official #1: "Who are those Hondurans?"
Ecuadorian official #2: "I don't know. I don't recognize any of those guys."
Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) had a few choice words about House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's (D-Calif.) landmark climate-change bill after its passage Friday.
When asked why he read portions of the cap-and-trade bill on the floor Friday night, Boehner told The Hill, "Hey, people deserve to know what's in this pile of s--t."
Using his privilege as leader to speak for an unlimited time on the House floor, Boehner spent an hour reading from the 1200-plus page bill that was amended 20 hours before the lower chamber voted 219-212 to approve it.
Eight Republicans voted with Democrats to pass the bill; 44 House Democrats voted against it.
Pelosi's office declined to comment on Boehner's jab. But one Democratic aide quipped, "What do you expect from a guy who thinks global warming is caused by cow manure?"That's the best response to Boehner they can come up with? Pathetic. Besides that, Republicans don't believe global warming is even occurring. Get it right, Dems.
“Too bad if a governor had to go missing it couldn’t have been the governor of Alaska. You know, Sarah Palin.”When you have to explain your jokes, you've failed.
Former GOP vice-presidential candidate Palin, in Kosovo visiting troops, said yesterday she wanted to reach out to the Bay State Democratic senator.Nicely done, and given with just the right amount of snark.
“He looked quite frustrated and he looked so sad,” she told the troops in comments later posted on YouTube. “I just wanted to reach out to the TV and say: ‘John Kerry, why the long face?’ ”
"We stand corrected, the truth is every Democrat hopes Governor Palin is in the public eye for a long, long time, especially on the 2012 presidential ballot," Kerry spokeswoman Jodi Seth says. "Lately it's been Vice President Cheney that everyone hopes would lose the cameras and go for a long leisurely hike on the Appalachian Trail. And good grief, if anyone thinks John Kerry is afraid of strong, smart women, they sure haven't met his brilliant wife and two independent daughters. It sounds like getting crushed these last two election cycles cost some of these Republicans their sense of humor."Kerry was obviously stung by Palin's remark to come back with such a pained response. It isn't the Republicans lacking a sense of humor. Our jokes are actually funny. They're not cries of pain as we see from the Democrats.
"Infomercial King" Billy Mays has died, according to Fox News. He is most known as the salesperson promoting OxiClean.In his honor Oxiclean will be used to clean the Michael Jackson star on Hollywood Blvd.
Billy Mays was reportedly inside the U.S. Airways plane which made a hard landing in Tampa, Florida on Saturday. He has now died.
On Saturday, Mays was on board the U.S. Airways passenger plane which made a hard landing at Tampa International Airport. No one was injured in the accident, according to airport officials, but Mays told a local television station that an item fell on his head. "All of a sudden as we hit you know it was just the hardest hit, all the things from the ceiling started dropping. It hit me on the head, but I got a hard head," Mays joked. Lt. Brian Dugan called it "pure speculation" to say his death could be related to the plane incident.
Big Guy bummed about Billy Mays; was counting on him to pitch healthcare reform, only not with a money back guarantee.UPDATE 4: From TMZ:
The FAA is already deflecting blame for the death of Billy Mays -- claiming the legendary TV pitchman wasn't wearing a seat belt when he took a shot to the head during a rough landing on a flight he was on yesterday.
Here's what we know -- Billy Mays was aboard US Airways Flight 1241 flying from Philadelphia, which landed roughly when the front tire blew out as it touched down. After the flight, Billy told FOX 13 in Tampa that something struck him in the head -- here's Billy's actual quote:
"All of a sudden as we hit you know it was just the hardest hit, all the things from the ceiling started dropping. It hit me on the head, but I got a hard head."
We called the FAA for comment, and a spokesperson told us, "The passenger needs to wear a seat belt during landing and he didn't."
UPDATE to the UPDATE: FAA now backing away from statement regarding seat belt. Claims they were misquoted.UPDATE 5: According to the website for "Pitchmen", the Discovery Channel reality show starring Billy Mays, an all day marathon of the show had been planned for July 1st. They haven't yet updated the website based on today's news.
More than a dozen soldiers arrested President Manuel Zelaya and disarmed his security guards after surrounding his residence before dawn Sunday, his private secretary said. Protesters called it a coup and flocked to the presidential palace as local news media reported that Zelaya was sent into exile.Just another day in South America.
The chief executive was detained shortly before voting was to begin on a constitutional referendum the president had insisted on holding even though the Supreme Court ruled it illegal and everyone from the military to Congress and members of his own party opposed it.
Zelaya was taken into military custody at his house outside the capital, Tegucigalpa, and whisked away to an air force base on the outskirts of the city, his private secretary, Carlos Enrique Reina told The Associated Press.
Tanks rolled through the streets and Army trucks carrying hundreds of soldiers equipped with metal riot shields surrounded the presidential palace in the capital's center. About 100 Zelaya supporters, many wearing "Yes," T-shirts for the referendum, blocked the main street outside the gates to the palace, throwing rocks and insults at soldiers and shouting "Traitors! Traitors!"
It was not immediately clear who was running the government. Soldiers appeared to be in control, but the constitution mandates that the head of Congress is next in line to the presidency, followed by the chief justice of the Supreme Court.
Neither military nor presidential officials have said who's in charge.
President Obama wasted no time in calling for Hondurans to respect democracy and rule of law — something it took him 10 days to say about Iran.
Maybe it is because this time, a lefty dictator was the one being ousted.
Yeah, it was the cost of health care that messed up their marriage.Jon and Kate Plus Health CareWould better insurance have saved this marriage?
Poor Jon and Kate. Their marriage is over, their show on hiatus, their domestic ordeal entering a new phase of acrimony. Possibly nothing could have saved this marriage, but one thing would have made it less fragile: a mandate for health insurance to cover in vitro fertilization.
If the Gosselins, whose efforts to raise eight kids have been chronicled over five seasons on cable television, had enjoyed, and availed themselves of, ready access to IVF -- the most sophisticated, controlled and expensive form of fertility treatment -- they almost certainly would not have had six children at once. "Just one more baby," is how Kate described their goal after twins. Without the added stress of sextuplets, they would have had a fighting chance at not fighting nearly as much as they did.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations intends to launch a nationwide campaign to distribute copies of the Islamic Quran to 100,000 local, state and national leaders, a campaign the organization's public relations department claims was inspired by President Obama's speech to Muslims earlier this month.Pretty soon you won't be able to go anywhere in America without seeing a public stoning.
In a statement released prior to a planned news conference next week announcing the "Share the Quran" campaign, CAIR described the scope of the outreach:
"In the multi-year initiative, American Muslims will sponsor Qurans for distribution to governors, state attorneys general, educators, law enforcement officials, state and national legislators, local elected and public officials, media professionals and other local or national leaders who shape public opinion or determine policy," the statement said.
The Jackson family has hired a private pathologist who completed a second autopsy on the performer's body today, according to sources familiar with the case.I have a comment, but it's pretty well summed up by my buddy Dale from Texas who sent me his thoughts:
The second autopsy came a day after an initial examination by the L.A. County coroner’s office did not immediately determine a cause of death. Officials said additional lab tests, including a toxicology screen, were required to uncover why the 50-year-old pop starwent into cardiac arrest in his rented Holmby Hills mansion Thursday.
The Rev. Jesse Jackson, who visited the performer’s family Friday, said in a “Good Morning America” interview today that his relatives had a host of questions about the circumstances of his death. He indicated the key area of concern had to do with Jackson’s personal physician, Dr. Conrad Murray, who was by his side when he stopped breathing.
"When did the doctor come? What did he do? Did he inject him? If so, with what?" Jackson said. "Was he on the scene twice? Before and then reaction to? Did he use the Demerol? It's a very powerful drug. Was he injected once? Was he injected twice?"
Jackson family gets private autopsy after official, county autopsy. I predict this is so they can then dispute the findings of the county coroner. Jackson most likely died of some type of drug influence, the Jackson camp will spin this thing to make him look better. Also, they may try to pin the abundance of drugs that will me found in Jackson's body on the good Doctor, so as to make MJ appear as the poor victim, rather than the broken, drug addicted, wacko (regretfully) he was...Yep.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad added new fuel to an intensifying spat with President Obama on Saturday, denouncing what he called "insulting" comments about a crackdown on protesters, and two opposition presidential candidates rejected participation in a special committee aimed at resolving the disputed June 12 election on the government's terms.President Imanutjob knows weakness when he sees it.
In televised remarks to judiciary officials Saturday, Ahmadinejad struck back at Obama a day after the U.S. president praised protesters for showing "bravery in the face of brutality," described violence against them as "outrageous" and said opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi has "captured the imagination" of Iranians who want a more open society. Obama also dismissed Ahmadinejad's demand for an apology for previous criticism and suggested that the Iranian leader apologize to the families of those who have been arrested, beaten or killed in the crackdown.
Noting that Obama has spoken of "reforms and changes," Ahmadinejad asked, "Why did he interfere and comment in a way that disregards convention and courtesy?" He said Western leaders who made "insulting and irrelevant comments will be put on a fair trial" by Iran at international gatherings.
"It is enough," he said. "Do not disgrace yourself further by such language and behavior."
The Obama administration on Friday named America's first ever special representative to Muslim communities.Nominating a woman to be representative to the Muslim Communities? Will she wear a burkha? Or perhaps just a veil?
President Obama has made reaching out to the Muslim world a key part of his foreign policy and he traveled to Cairo earlier in June year to give a major speech in which he cited the Koran and emphasized commonalities between America and Islam.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Friday named Farah Pandith as the United States Special Representative to Muslim Communites. Pandit is expected to engage with Muslims around the world on a grassroots and organizational level.
“I am pleased to announce the appointment of Farah Pandith to serve as Special Representative to Muslim Communities," Clinton said. "Farah brings years of experience to the job, and she will play a leading role in our efforts to engage Muslims around the world."
Pandith, a State Department veteran and former official at the U.S. Agency for International Development, was an immigrant to the United States from India.
Grief turned into anger Saturday for fans of Michael Jackson who bitterly accused his doctors -- and society at large -- for cutting short the King of Pop's tragic life.
Two days after one of history's best-selling artists collapsed and died at his rented Beverly Hills mansion, streams of fans kept offering flowers and teddy bears outside his home and on his star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame.Dr. Murray is going to have a lot of people looking for him, and he's not gonna want to be found by them.
"He shouldn't have died so young. It's so sad. I'm just hysterical," said Deborah Canton as she sobbed inconsolably near the late 50-year-old pop singer's star.
Canton, 46, grew up in Jackson's home state of Indiana and listened to him since he was a child star in the Jackson 5. She blamed society for treating him cruelly.
"The guy would never hurt a fly but all of these evil people would do everything to destroy him just to get his money," she said. "I don't think he wanted to live anymore."
She pointed to the accusations of pedophilia, on which Jackson was acquitted, and sharply criticized the doctors who surrounded the pop star.
"The doctors were greedy bastards. I do hold them responsible," she said.
Los Angeles police are hoping to question the singer's doctor, identified as Conrad Murray, a second time late Saturday. Murray is reported to have injected Jackson with the powerful painkiller Demerol shortly before his death.
In a lousy week, Mark Sanford had one stroke of luck: Michael Jackson chose the day after the governor's news conference to moonwalk into eternity, and thus gave the media's pop therapists a more rewarding subject to feast on – or at any rate one of the few stories whose salient points are weirder than Sanford's. Not that the governor didn't do his best to keep his end up on the pop culture allusions: "I've spent the last five days crying in Argentina," he revealed, in presumably unconscious hommage to Evita.The reality is that Democrats never get punished for these things. They can have whatever sordid affairs they want to have and their voters and the press will just shrug and say "it's just sex". However, when Republicans do this stuff it becomes the scandal of the year and everyone demands their resignation or ouster at the polls. It's not fair, but that's the way it is.
The plot owed less to Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber than to one of those Fox movies of the early Forties in which some wholesome All-American type escapes the stress and strain of modern life by taking off for a quiet weekend in Latin America, and the next thing you know they're doing the rhumba on the floor of a Rio nightclub surrounded by Carmen Miranda and 200 gay caballeros prancing around waving giant bananas. In this case, the gentlemen of the South Carolina Press were the befuddled caballeros and Gov. Sanford was bananas.
There is a rather large point to all this. As my National Review colleague Kathryn Jean Lopez observed, a sex scandal a week from the Republicans will guarantee us government health care by the fall – in the same way that the British Tories' boundlessly versatile sexual predilections helped deliver the Blair landslide of 1997. And once government health care's in place the game's over: Socialized medicine redefines the relationship between the citizen and the state in all the wrong ways, and, if you cross that bridge, it's all but impossible to go back. So, if ever there were a season for GOP philanderers not to unpeel their bananas, this summer is it.
During the presidential campaign, Barack Obama promised that once a bill was passed by Congress, the White House would post it online for five days before he signed it.
“When there’s a bill that ends up on my desk as president, you the public will have five days to look online and find out what’s in it before I sign it, so that you know what your government’s doing,” Mr. Obama said as a candidate, telling voters he would make government more transparent and accountable.Why should we read the bills if Congress doesn't even bother doing it?
When he took office in January, his team added that in posting nonemergency bills, it would “allow the public to review and comment” before Mr. Obama signed them.
Five months into his administration, Mr. Obama has signed two dozen bills, but he has almost never waited five days. On the recent credit card legislation, which included a controversial measure to allow guns in national parks, he waited just two. . . .
Now, in a tacit acknowledgment that the campaign pledge was easier to make than to fulfill, the White House is changing its terms. Instead of starting the five-day clock when Congress passes a bill, administration officials say they intend to start it earlier and post the bills sooner.
“In order to continue providing the American people more transparency in government, once it is clear that a bill will be coming to the president’s desk, the White House will post the bill online,” said Nick Shapiro, a White House spokesman. “This will give the American people a greater ability to review the bill, often many more than five days before the president signs it into law.”
Steve Fielding recently asked the Obama administration to reassure him on the science of man-made global warming. When the administration proved unhelpful, Mr. Fielding decided to vote against climate-change legislation.The facts are there but the Democrats just don't want to hear them.
If you haven't heard of this politician, it's because he's a member of the Australian Senate. As the U.S. House of Representatives prepares to pass a climate-change bill, the Australian Parliament is preparing to kill its own country's carbon-emissions scheme. Why? A growing number of Australian politicians, scientists and citizens once again doubt the science of human-caused global warming.
Among the many reasons President Barack Obama and the Democratic majority are so intent on quickly jamming a cap-and-trade system through Congress is because the global warming tide is again shifting. It turns out Al Gore and the United Nations (with an assist from the media), did a little too vociferous a job smearing anyone who disagreed with them as "deniers." The backlash has brought the scientific debate roaring back to life in Australia, Europe, Japan and even, if less reported, the U.S.
In April, the Polish Academy of Sciences published a document challenging man-made global warming. In the Czech Republic, where President Vaclav Klaus remains a leading skeptic, today only 11% of the population believes humans play a role. In France, President Nicolas Sarkozy wants to tap Claude Allegre to lead the country's new ministry of industry and innovation. Twenty years ago Mr. Allegre was among the first to trill about man-made global warming, but the geochemist has since recanted. New Zealand last year elected a new government, which immediately suspended the country's weeks-old cap-and-trade program.
The number of skeptics, far from shrinking, is swelling. Oklahoma Sen. Jim Inhofe now counts more than 700 scientists who disagree with the U.N. -- 13 times the number who authored the U.N.'s 2007 climate summary for policymakers. Joanne Simpson, the world's first woman to receive a Ph.D. in meteorology, expressed relief upon her retirement last year that she was finally free to speak "frankly" of her nonbelief. Dr. Kiminori Itoh, a Japanese environmental physical chemist who contributed to a U.N. climate report, dubs man-made warming "the worst scientific scandal in history." Norway's Ivar Giaever, Nobel Prize winner for physics, decries it as the "new religion." A group of 54 noted physicists, led by Princeton's Will Happer, is demanding the American Physical Society revise its position that the science is settled. (Both Nature and Science magazines have refused to run the physicists' open letter.)
The collapse of the "consensus" has been driven by reality. The inconvenient truth is that the earth's temperatures have flat-lined since 2001, despite growing concentrations of C02. Peer-reviewed research has debunked doomsday scenarios about the polar ice caps, hurricanes, malaria, extinctions, rising oceans. A global financial crisis has politicians taking a harder look at the science that would require them to hamstring their economies to rein in carbon.
In yet another sign of political perfidy, the White House of President George W. Bush has drafted a presidential executive order that would allow that double-dealing Republican chief executive to hold suspected terrorist detainees indefinitely.
According to the president's intentions, such suspects could be detained for long periods of time, virtually indefinitely. Is this really what the nation voted for last November?
Oh, wait. No. According to an exclusive Washington Post report this afternoon, it's the refreshing new Democratic administration of Barack Obama that's now preparing this new executive order to hold certain terrorist suspects indefinitely.
This is an obviously inspiring sign of the new style of leadership the Democrat promised and is finally bringing to the White House. And it shows the kind of powerful political pragmatism with which the ex-senator from Illinois approaches this job at such a crucial and globally turbulent time.
According to the Post report, the 44th president is now starting to think that closure of the internationally-reviled Guantanamo Bay detention facility, which Obama announced with so much fanfare on his first day in office last winter, may be impossible to actually accomplish before the one-year deadline he set for himself before actually planning where else to put these prisoners
In other words, fanfare aside, status quo ante. Democrat or Republican, same deal. Ex-Vice President Dick Cheney will be so pleased that the Obama-Biden folks finally accepted his advice to protect national security.
Another sign, finally, of real change after eight long years of the very same thing.
A 300 page amendment to a bill that greatly impacts every American and greatly burdens every American business was introduced at 3:00 AM Friday and passed 16 hours later.Congress should be ashamed, but they are so far beyond being able to be ashamed at this point only running them out of office will get their attention.
The spectacle of the House voting for a massive tax increase and a 300 page amendment they could not have read is a low point for post-segregationist Congresses. Never have so few read so little about so important a proposal, and yet brazen forward oblivious to the the deeply embarrassing charade it presents to the world. Banana republics make a better show of governing themselves than did the U.S. House of Representatives today.
The only good thing about this disaster for the country's reputation is the undeniable message it sends to voters about just how hard left the Democrats are and at the same time just how irresponsible the Obama/Pelosi/Reid majority is. Not only does today's debacle strengthen the case for a massive course correction and return to balance in D.C. in 2010, it also should increase resistance to the similarly radical attempt to remake American medicine into a single-payer, government-dominated, Canada-style plan. A majority so obviously indifferent to the substance of "legislation" they pass should not be trusted with the medicine that Americans need to live well and long.
The country knows the Obama/Pelosi/Reid Democrats are drunk on power and lurching so far to the left as to stun even partisan Democrats. The Senate may stop this attempt at economic suicide, but independents and Republicans cannot allow the public to forget the recklessness of today's abdication of responsibility by the hard left House leadership.
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