There’s a new wiki on avian flu.

Read Full Post »

Oh my. They now have a “Fight Club” storyline on “All My Children.” See, Ryan is convinced that he carries bad DNA from his crazy family and refuses to have a baby with wife Greenlee (who’s trying to steal the sperm deposit he made before his vasectomy, but that’s another story). To make sure his [...]

Read Full Post »

So what are you having for lunch?
Analysis of the data showed that those who wanted to lose weight and succeeded were significantly more likely to die young than those who stayed fat.
“Healthy overweight or obese subjects who try to lose weight and succeed in doing so over a six-year period suffer from almost double [...]

Read Full Post »

Do you believe these assholes? Of course you do:
Earlier this month, Soros joined an ownership bid being led by entrepreneur Jonathan Ledecky. Their group is one of more than a half-dozen angling to take over the Nats, who are currently owned by Major League Baseball.
In addition to being a well-known currency speculator and philanthropist, [...]

Read Full Post »

Duncan pointed us to this piece Little Ricky Santorum did for Catholic Online:
It is startling that those in the media and academia appear most disturbed by this aberrant behavior, since they have zealously promoted moral relativism by sanctioning “private” moral matters such as alternative lifestyles. Priests, like all of us, are affected by culture. When [...]

Read Full Post »

And yet, didn’t the opposite logic apply to phone carriers?
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court ruled on Monday that cable companies may keep rival Internet providers from using their lines, a decision that will limit competition and consumers’ choices.
The 6-3 decision is a victory for the Bush administration, which sought exclusive control to promote broadband investment [...]

Read Full Post »

This means Judy Miller’s going to jail - unless she testifies:
WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court rejected appeals Monday from two journalists who have refused to testify before a grand jury about the leak of an undercover CIA officer’s identity.

Read Full Post »

SCOTUS says file-sharing services can be sued.
Which, logically speaking, means copy machine manufacturers can be sued, since they are so often blatantly used to make copies of copyrighted material.
But then, logic had nothing to do with this decision. Big business did.

Read Full Post »

Maya sent this over. Yes, it’s a year old but still relevant - especially to me:
Sept. 30, 2003 — Psychologists from U of T and Harvard University have identified one of the biological bases of creativity.
The study in the September issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology says the brains of creative people [...]

Read Full Post »

SCOTUS ruled no display of the ten commandments on public property.
I did mention these sacred courthouse monuments were originally publicity stunts for Cecil B. DeMille’s “The Ten Commandments”?
CLARIFICATION: Allowed in some public properties, not in courthouses under most conditions.

Read Full Post »

I was at the local Philly for Change picnic yesterday. These are the local Dean people, and a very nice bunch they are.
But you know me. I had to shake things up.
A bunch of us were sitting under a shady tree and I started an impassioned speech about how Sixties politics were infused with sex, [...]

Read Full Post »

Morons.
I had dinner with a reporter the other night who told me, “I really think Watergate ruined journalism. Because it went from people who really wanted to serve the public to people who just wanted to be the next Woodward and Bernstein.”
I agree. Glory hounds, just as the original “Saturday Night Live” went from a [...]

Read Full Post »

Krugman:
The China National Offshore Oil Corporation, a company that is 70 percent owned by the Chinese government, is seeking to acquire control of Unocal, an energy company with global reach. In particular, Unocal has a history - oddly ignored in much reporting on the Chinese offer - of doing business with problematic regimes in difficult [...]

Read Full Post »

Bob Herbert:
The all-volunteer Army is fine in peacetime, and in military routs like the first gulf war. But when the troops are locked in a prolonged war that yields high casualties, and they look over their shoulders to see if reinforcements are coming from the general population, they find -as they’re finding now - that [...]

Read Full Post »

I finally found the field where my Dead Ex-Husband’s brother was playing ball yesterday morning. (It was tucked all the way in the corner of a township baseball complex I didn’t even know was there.)
Ex-Brother-in-Law had the power, but his swing was off and the most he got while I was there was a single. [...]

Read Full Post »

We used to be America:
WASHINGTON, June 26 - Two leading civil rights groups charge in a new study that the Bush administration has twisted the American system of due process “beyond recognition” in jailing at least 70 terror suspects as “material witnesses” since the Sept. 11 attacks, and the groups are calling on Congress to [...]

Read Full Post »

Look where “liberal” Tony Blair is sending his kid. Via AMERICABlog:
Just when I was starting to detest the little poodle a bit less, he goes and sends junior to the US to intern with Republican Congressman David Dreier of California. Dreier is the Chairman of the House rules committee so junior will have plenty of [...]

Read Full Post »

It never occurred to me anyone would especially want my opinion on how to react to Karl Rove’s comments, but at least a few of you do, so here it is.
For what it’s worth, I’m always happy to see the extremists’ tactics used against them; it does my heart good to see Democrats fighting [...]

Read Full Post »

Today: Early-morning baseball game, two cookouts, and karaoke night. What’s on tap for your day?

Read Full Post »

Frank Rich:
But this time the game is far more insidious and ingenious. The intent is not to kill off PBS and NPR but to castrate them by quietly annexing their news and public affairs operations to the larger state propaganda machine that the Bush White House has been steadily constructing at taxpayers’ expense. If you [...]

Read Full Post »

The newly-appointed Judge William Pryor:
Federal appeals Judge William H. Pryor Jr., whose fierce opposition to abortion prompted a two-year fight over his Senate confirmation, said Wednesday that “it’d certainly be wrong for a Catholic lawyer or judge to do something to advance a grave evil like abortion.”
Pryor, who two weeks ago won a narrow [...]

Read Full Post »

We were watching a local “American Idol” clone show tonight, and I had to turn it off. All those glissandos and trills make my ears hurt; it’s not so much singing as vocal acrobatics. God forbid these would-be superstars understand the concept “Less is more.”
This one singer put so many notes into each [...]

Read Full Post »

An Iraqi journalist asks a simple question of a simpleton. Via Corrente:
Anyhow, here’s the question one of them asked Bush:
“When will you begin the reconstruction in Iraq?”
So, to an Iraqi, it looks like no reconstruction at all has taken place—a little reality therapy for our delusional President:
[The] question that seemed to take Bush, who has [...]

Read Full Post »

Pointed letter to the New York Times:
I was surprised that neither you nor the reporter Scott Shane mentioned this aspect of the public’s right to know: the practice of rendition is of dubious legality, and the Bush administration has denied practicing it.
Extraordinary rendition is illegal under Article 3 of the United Nations Convention Against [...]

Read Full Post »

I was at a lovely pool party out on the Main Line tonight. One of the hosts is a staffer for a House subcommittee having to do with the national parks, and he was sending his boss some info via Blackberry. “What, is there someplace you haven’t drilled for oil yet?” someone quipped.
We were swapping [...]

Read Full Post »

The Great Plaza at Penn’s Landing.

Read Full Post »

Why the delay?
Although the Agriculture Department confirmed Friday that a cow that died last year was infected with mad cow disease, a test the agency conducted seven months ago indicated that the animal had the disease. The result was never publicly disclosed.
The delay in confirming the United States’ second case of mad cow disease [...]

Read Full Post »

Quotable:

Among conservatives there’s been too much pseudo-populism, almost too much concern and attention for, quote, ‘the people’… After all, we conservatives are on the side of the lords and barons… We…are pulling up the drawbridge against the peasants.
- William Kristol

Read Full Post »

Here’s what 9/11 widow Kristin Breitweiser had to say about KKK Karl’s Komments:
More to the point, Karl when you say, “Conservatives saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and prepared for war,� what exactly did you do to prepare for your war? Did your preparations include: sound intelligence to warrant your actions; a reasonable entry [...]

Read Full Post »

Chris Bowers tells us exactly what conservatives did in response to 9/11.

Read Full Post »