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Tomorrow Stan "Tookie" Williams founder of the Crips gang is scheduled to die. Many feel that Tookie has turned has life around, he's written books about his life, and has had his story made into a movie and even been nominated for the Nobel Prize Some say he deserves clemency others do not this morning Tookie was denied an appeal to the California Supreme Court and is waiting on a federal appeal. Which begs the question Should Tookie Die?
comment posted at 12:13 AM on Dec-13-05

Newsfilter: White people riot in Sydney, Australia They're upset that a lifeguard or something got beat up by a bunch of 'middle eastern looking' people.
comment posted at 1:21 AM on Dec-12-05

Conservative Blogs Rock! NEW YORK In an argument sure to be challenged in certain sectors of the blogosphere, a story in The New York Times magazine coming up this Sunday declares that conservative blogs continue to best liberal blogs in political and electoral influence.
comment posted at 1:50 AM on Dec-12-05

Live News Filter: Federal air marshal fires shots in jet bridge of American Airlines flight in Miami. NBC | CNN reports.
comment posted at 12:07 PM on Dec-7-05

Interesting (if biased) article on the downside of Craigslist's populist appeal in the form of it's contribution to the imminent death of the print newsmedia, especially in the SF Bay Area.
comment posted at 10:55 AM on Dec-5-05

Precision Lawn Chair Marching Dads
comment posted at 10:51 AM on Dec-5-05

Iwan.com has lots of nice photos of interesting places and people and an inoffensive site layout.
comment posted at 10:10 AM on Dec-1-05

The wait is over : Firefox 1.5 is out, to be found on the brand spanking new mozilla.com.
comment posted at 3:55 PM on Nov-29-05

'Gay' horse jibe lands student in court
comment posted at 7:45 PM on Nov-25-05
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comment posted at 9:59 PM on Nov-25-05

In 2001 America destroyed the Kabul offices of al-Jazeera with two smartbombs; officials said it was an accident. In 2003 America destroyed the Baghdad offices of al-Jazeera with missiles; officials said it was an accident. Now, two British civil servants are on trial for leaking a memo revealing that Bush intended to bomb al-Jazeera... at their headquarters in allied Qatar.
comment posted at 9:48 AM on Nov-22-05

Louisiana Leads in Army Corps Spending, but Millions Had Nothing to Do With Floods
In Katrina's wake, Louisiana politicians and other critics have complained about paltry funding for the Army Corps in general and Louisiana projects in particular. But over the five years of President Bush's administration, Louisiana has received far more money for Corps civil works projects than any other state, about $1.9 billion; California was a distant second with less than $1.4 billion, even though its population is more than seven times as large.

[H]undreds of millions of dollars have gone to unrelated water projects demanded by the state's congressional delegation and approved by the Corps, often after economic analyses that turned out to be inaccurate. Despite a series of independent investigations criticizing Army Corps construction projects as wasteful pork-barrel spending, Louisiana's representatives have kept bringing home the bacon.
comment posted at 7:25 AM on Sep-8-05
comment posted at 8:04 AM on Sep-8-05

Everything Sounds Like Coldplay Now
comment posted at 4:03 AM on Sep-6-05

A toxic landfill site on which low-income housing was built in central New Orleans is now under floodwaters with the potential to pollute and contaminate portions of the Gulf Coast. In the 1940s and 1950s, the site was routinely sprayed with DDT, but in 1962 some 229,300 cubic metres of excess fill was removed because subsurface toxic fires kept erupting (and got the site known as "Dante's Inferno"). According to the editor of Hazardous Waste magazine, the site -- now under water -- will almost inevitably leach toxic effluent into the floodwaters, with the potential of inflicting unpredictable damage on the coast, and those that live there -- a possible environmental catastrophe. Tests by the EPA in the 1980s and 90s found 149 chemicals - 44 of which are known carcinogens. Among the toxic substances found were arsenic, lead, mercury, barium, and other organic compounds that are associated with pesticides and the burning of waste. Finally, what is the status of the Waterford 3 nuke plant just north of New Orleans, and what is the status of that plant's nuclear waste ? News reports say it sustained damage to 'off-site buildings' but what does that mean? Were those waste containment facilities?
comment posted at 3:32 AM on Sep-6-05
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comment posted at 6:53 AM on Sep-6-05

US Troops Mutiny in Iraq? "...the US embassy in Baghdad is checking into reports that U.S. troops in Iraq, including National Guardsmen, Army and Marine Corps Reserves, and regular military troops from Louisiana and Mississippi, have mutinied against their officers and are demanding to be immediately sent back home to help their families."
comment posted at 3:11 AM on Sep-6-05

While FEMA is slow to reach those in New Orleans, they were quick to promote Operation Blessing, Pat Robertson's controversial faith-based "charity", linking their website second only to the Red Cross. Hours after the federal agency was exposed by the blog Sploid today, they quickly tried to hide their support for the pastor's organization by changing their web pages.
comment posted at 10:56 PM on Sep-1-05

Hastert Questions Rebuilding New Orleans Let's see...they're poor, they're black, and they voted for Kerry. He, on the other hand, is rich, fat, white, from Illinois, Speaker of the House and the body behind KOMPAC ("Dedicated to Keeping Our Republican Majority in the U.S. House"). Why on God's green earth would Dennis Hastert want to see New Orleans rebuilt anyway? What a disgrace.
comment posted at 4:45 PM on Sep-1-05

Made-in-Israel Paper Cups Used in Local Hospital.
comment posted at 2:43 AM on Sep-1-05
comment posted at 11:26 AM on Sep-1-05

China to invade USA within the decade, using biological weapons to kill "hundreds of millions". Film at 11.
comment posted at 2:29 PM on Aug-21-05
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comment posted at 2:42 PM on Aug-21-05

No mere slap on the wrist for Merck. Jury awards grieving widow $253.4 Mil in Vioxx suit. The first of thousands of cases like it. (washpost)
comment posted at 3:10 PM on Aug-21-05
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comment posted at 9:28 PM on Aug-21-05

"Like any red-blooded, masculine man of the male gender, I love PVC weaponry. You should too. If the concept of heading down to Home Depot and transforming $100 worth of random pipe bits into a killing machine doesn’t appeal to you, you’re a frikkin' pansy. For those of you who laugh at hypersonic shards of plastic puncturing your spleen, here’s a look at how I’ve kept myself busy for the past week: building a PVC-pipe flamethrower."
comment posted at 3:06 PM on Aug-21-05

the entire western Siberian sub-Arctic region has begun to melt an "ecological landslide that is probably irreversible and is undoubtedly connected to climatic warming". He says that the entire western Siberian sub-Arctic region has begun to melt, and this "has all happened in the last three or four years". wow. have we reached the "tipping point" ?
comment posted at 12:22 AM on Aug-17-05

Americans can choose to live a "French" lifestyle—say, as a musician, professor or artist—with low stress and low rewards. Or, Americans can choose to live an "American" lifestyle—as salesmen or stock
comment posted at 7:30 PM on Aug-16-05

Get ready for 'weathertainment.' Basic cable standby The Weather Channel is changing its lineup, adding among other things, a morning show and "The Weather Channel Top Ten." Too fluff for your tastes? Check out Weather USA and Rising Slowly for your meteorological needs.
comment posted at 7:36 PM on Aug-16-05

Cindy Sheehan's Sinister Piffle
By Christopher Hitchens

The military and its relatives have no extra claim on the chief executive's ear. Indeed, it might be said that they have less claim than the rest of us, since they have voluntarily sworn an oath to obey and carry out orders. Most presidents in time of war have made an exception in the case of the bereaved — Lincoln's letter to the mother of two dead Union soldiers (at the time, it was thought that she had lost five sons) is a famous instance — but the job there is one of comfort and reassurance, and this has already been discharged in the Sheehan case. If that stricken mother had been given an audience and had risen up to say that Lincoln had broken his past election pledges and sought a wider and more violent war with the Confederacy, his aides would have been quite right to show her the door and to tell her that she was out of order.

comment posted at 9:15 PM on Aug-15-05

Someone Tell the President the War Is Over. Nothing that happens on the ground in Iraq can turn around the fate of this war in America: not a shotgun constitution rushed to meet an arbitrary deadline, not another Iraqi election, not higher terrorist body counts, not another battle for Falluja (where insurgents may again regroup, The Los Angeles Times reported last week).
comment posted at 6:54 PM on Aug-14-05
comment posted at 8:10 PM on Aug-14-05

Having trouble keeping up with the latest from your buddy George? Try his new podcast.
comment posted at 6:59 PM on Aug-14-05
comment posted at 8:15 PM on Aug-14-05

Best of the web: Metagoogle.
comment posted at 1:49 PM on Aug-13-05

Apple does it again!
comment posted at 8:40 AM on Aug-12-05

Siberia's permafrost is melting. New Scientist reports that 250 million acres of permafrost are thawing, exposing the world's largest peat bog. This is likely to release billions of tons of methane gas. This would likely cause a positive feedback loop, massively accelerating global warming.
comment posted at 12:16 AM on Aug-12-05

If I were a journalist, I would list all the arguments that you hear against pulling U.S. troops out of Iraq, the horrible things that people say would happen, and then ask: Aren’t they happening already? Would a pullout really make things worse? Maybe it would make things better... The wisest course for journalists might be to begin sustained investigations of why leading Democrats have failed so miserably to challenge the US occupation of Iraq. The first step, of course, is to establish as conventional wisdom the fact that the war was never in the US interest and has not become so. It is such an obvious case to make that I find it difficult to believe many pundits and political leaders have not already made it repeatedly.   Lieutenant General William E. Odom : What’s Wrong With Cutting and Running ? See also Early Pullout Unlikely In Iraq & Myers: Possibility of third Iraq tours for active-duty troops 'always out there'...
comment posted at 2:08 PM on Aug-11-05

Emergence of the Progressive Blogosphere: A New Force in American Politics

Since March of 2005, the total number of blogs has grown from 7.8 million to 14.2 million. At this rate, the online universe is doubling in size every five months. This memo is a comprehensive look at the underlying dynamics of these online communities, along with a targeted analysis of how to engage them to generate political power.
comment posted at 1:54 PM on Aug-11-05

Cindy Sheehan says Bill O'Reilly is an "Obscenity to Humanity" [...]Asked how she feels about the MSM devoting so much time to the Natalee Holloway story, Sheehan said "Holloway is a tragedy for one family" but what she's doing is trying to help thousands of families avoid tragedy.[...]
comment posted at 7:22 PM on Aug-10-05
comment posted at 7:33 PM on Aug-10-05