"Is God really going to let the Earth burn up?"

State supreme court judges should not follow obviously wrong decisions simply because they are `precedents,'

"State supreme courts may decline to follow bad U.S. Supreme Court precedents because those decisions bind only the parties to the particular case," he wrote.

Another candidate, Henry P. "Hank" Fowler, a member of Parker's staff, said conservative judges must stop surrendering to liberal Supreme Court opinions "without a word of protest." And lawyer Ben Hand said judges "can't just break the law and then point to the guy down the street in the black robe and say, `He told me to.'"

More than anything else, our foriegn policy is just a horrendous, jumbled, incoherent mess -- actions in search of some post hoc, unifying rationale. We embrace the worst tyrants in China, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Egypt; act with hostility to numerous democratically elected governments that we dislike; and then preach to the world that all of our actions, including our militarily aggressive ones, are geared toward the goal of spreading democracy and freedom around the world.

There are good, convincing, legitimate reasons why we should maintain alliances with undemocratic countries which nonetheless promote U.S. interests (including, for instance, a country's cooperation in tracking Al Qaeda activities, as Libya's intelligence service provides). Virtually every country makes its foreign policy decisions based on that self-interested calculus. But we are a country which has now loudly proclaimed that everything we do -- including invading soveriegn countries -- is justified by our need to bring democracy to the world. Once a country makes that the proclaimed centerpiece of its foriegn policy, acting in direct contradiction to it achieves nothing other than the destruction of national credibility and the failure of every claimed foreign policy objective.

Dem Chair Dean Compares Gay Marriage Opponents To Bigots...

The criminal Bush Regime has now murdered more Iraqis than Saddam Hussen. The Bush Regime is also responsible for 20,000 US casualties (dead, maimed for life, and wounded).
Bush damns the "axis of evil." But who has the "axis of evil" attacked? Iran has attacked no one. North Korea has attacked no country for more than a half century. Iraq attacked Kuiwait a decade and a half ago, apparently after securing permission from the US ambassador.

. . .

Where does the danger to the world reside? In Iran, a small religious country where the family is intact and the government is constrained by religious authority and ancient traditions, or in the US where propaganda rules and the powerful executive branch has removed itself from accountability by breaking the constitutional restraints on its power?

. . .

Americans think that they are the salt of the earth. The hubris that comes from this self-righteous belief makes Americans blind to the evil of their leaders. How can American leaders be evil when Americans are so good and so wonderful?

. . .

Wasn't it evil for the US to bomb Iraq for a decade and to embargo medicines for children?
When US Secretary of State M. Albright was asked if she thought an embargo that resulted in the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children was justified, she replied, "yes."

The former terrible tyrant ruler of Iraq, Saddam Hussein, is on trial for killing 150 people. The US government murdered 500,000 Iraqi children prior to Bush's invasion. When the US government murders people, whether Serbs, Branch Davidians at Waco, or Iraqi women and children, it is "collateral damage." But we put Saddam Hussein on trial for putting down rebellions.

Gentle reader, do you believe that the Bush Regime will not shoot you down in the streets if you have a rebellion?

"All I had heard about Chavez was that he was a dictator," Santiago, 38, said after returning to Philadelphia. "The man is far from that. He's a really warm person. I wanted to bring him home and stick him in the White House."

[Ted Nugent] explains his political philosophy which, as I understand it, is based on extending the death penalty to a far wider range of crimes than homicide, then arming any survivors to the teeth.

...

"I say if somebody robs you, shoot 'em. I'd like all thieves killed. And all rapists. And carjackers. No more graffiti. No more...snatch-pursing."

...

He went to Fallujah in May 2004, as part of a tour with the USO....
"And I visited Saddam Hussein's master war room. It was a glorious moment. It looked like something out of Star Wars. I saw his gold toilet. I shit in his bidet."
In Iraq, he says, he was allowed the opportunity to man automatic weapons. "Our failure," he tells me, "has been not to Nagasaki them."

...

Just to set the mood, he fires the .22 out of the open cab window.... He fires at a Styrofoam bear using his weapon of choice, a traditional bow and arrow. "Straight through the heart... dead bear," says Ted, as his heavily pitted target submits to yet another onslaught. "Both lungs... dead bear." The arrows, which he makes himself, keep flying. "Dead bear... dead bear... dead bear."

...

"I saw the riding crop. A lot. I felt it, I think, just once. But corporal punishment is real good. It teaches dogs not to shit on the couch."

"It didn't stop you urinating on that nun."

"These are legends."

"You've described that incident for publication."

"I was in Jesuit School. When we peed, the nuns would stand behind, checking on us. I had an erection one time and I peed all over the wall. I was inclined to turn round and tell the nun 'I'm just peeing here.' I didn't....Neither did I poke my erect penis through a map of West Virginia - did you read that?"

"No."

...

"You want to know how to get peace, love and understanding?" he replies. "Who doesn't know this? The Ku-Klux-Klan? The Black Panthers? Child rapists? How do you get peace, love and understanding? First of all you have to find all the bad people. Then," Nugent adds, "you kill them."

After hearing Thursday that Enron Corp. founder Kenneth Lay and former Chief Executive Jeffrey Skilling had just been convicted of conspiracy to commit securities and wire fraud, former employees' reactions ranged from elation to satisfaction to indifference.

A sultan has granted a commoner a chance to marry one of his daughters. The commoner will be presented with the daughters one at a time and, when each daughter is presented, the commoner will be told the daughter's dowry (which is fixed in advance). Upon being presented with a daughter, the commoner must immediately decide whether to accept or reject her (he is not allowed to return to a previously rejected daughter). However, the sultan will allow the marriage to take place only if the commoner picks the daughter with the overall highest dowry. Then what is the commoner's best strategy, assuming he knows nothing about the distribution of dowries?

The NPA will also encourage biracial people [. . .] to apply as riot police.

Semin-hole

In a story that almost defies commentary, seven-foot Florida State basketball recruit Jon Kreft was arrested last week on drug-and-traffic charges after he was caught hiding marijuana in his car and cocaine in his rectum.

The outline of the case is as follows: Kreft was pulled over for a traffic stop. Officers observed him reaching under the seat of the car. He consented to a search, and the officers found marijuana under the seat. Kreft then volunteered to police that he had “something else” — at which point he bent over and spread his buttocks, and a baggie with 1.7 grams of coke fell out.

My question here is, who was doing the coke with Kreft? And did he or she know where he was keeping it?

"Use the LEFT and RIGHT arrow keys to move the color at the top of the page. Press the DOWN arrow key to drop it.

When a color is dropped, its color is added to the colors in adjacent squares, using the additive color system (color theory). There is a color key for reference below.

Make WHITE SQUARES for points."

For all the talk of the weakened and impotent presidency and the split among Republicans, it is still virtually always the case that the President gets what he wants, and does so without much difficulty.

"In which coloured diagrams and symbols are used instead of letters for greater ease of learners."

"Please do not refrain from reading this book because you have become suspicious that a comprehensive inventory of discovery precludes further discovery."

In 2003 AT&T built "secret rooms" hidden deep in the bowels of its central offices in various cities, housing computer gear for a government spy operation which taps into the company's popular WorldNet service and the entire internet. These installations enable the government to look at every individual message on the internet and analyze exactly what people are doing. Documents showing the hardwire installation in San Francisco suggest that there are similar locations being installed in numerous other cities.

In a 44-page response to the Maine Public Utilities Commission today, Verizon refused to confirm or deny cooperation in the illegal National Security Agency program, arguing that the Public Utilities Commission lacks the authority to investigate whether Verizon has provided NSA access to its customer records and its switching machines in Maine. Verizon further asserted a "state secrets privilege.” The state secrets privilege, when properly invoked, permits the government to block disclosure of particular documents that would cause harm to national security.

“We were surpised to see Verizon make the state secrets argument because only the government, not private entities, can assert that privilege,” said Shenna Bellows, Executive Director of the Maine Civil Liberties Union. “Use of the state secrets argument indicates that Verizon lawyers may have worked closely with federal government lawyers in drafting a response to the PUC. Both the PUC and Senators Collins and Snowe should proceed with a thorough investigation of Verizon’s actions.

“I’m dumbfounded that this corporation is trying to hide behind the federal government’s state secret privilege,” said James Cowie, MCLU member and lead complainant in complaint case Docket No. 2006-274. “Verizon’s response reads like it came from the government, instead of our local telephone company. I hope Senators Snowe and Collins would be concerned about this as well.”

The 52-year-old Tioga-Nicetown man, who we are identifying only by his first name of Howard, arrived home late Wednesday, hours after his wife allegedly tore off two parts of his genitalia with her bare hands.

MEN FROM CHINA come here to do LAUNDRY WORK. The Chinese Empire contains 600,000,000 (six hundred millions) inhabitants.

The supply of these men is inexhaustible.

Every one doing this work takes BREAD from the mouths of OUR WOMEN.

So many have come of late, that to keep at work, they are obliged to cut prices.

1. NaXis
   
2. Simple, undetectable voting fraud
   
3. Zombies

Mr Goma said his interview was "very short", but he was prepared to return to the airwaves and was "happy to speak about any situation".

He added that next time he would insist upon "preparing myself".

The official said [it] was wrong to suggest that ABC News phone calls were being “tracked.”

“Think of it more as backtracking,” said a senior federal official.

They suffered a blow last week when the judge ruled that jurors could find the men guilty of deliberately avoiding knowledge of massive fraud.

Known as the "ostrich instruction", because it refers to a person sticking their head in the sand, the ruling means prosecutors can present a lower burden of proof to be successful.

And now ChoicePoint and George Bush want your blood. Forget your phone bill. ChoicePoint, a sickened executive of the company told us in confidence, "hope[s] to build a database of DNA samples from every person in the United States …linked to all the other information held by CP [ChoicePoint]" from medical to voting records.

Moreover, a captured al-Qaeda training manual makes no mention of this method of steganography. The chapter on communications in the al-Qaeda manual acknowledges the technical superiority of US security services, and generally advocates low-technology forms of covert communication.

The chapter on "codes and ciphers" places considerable emphasis on using invisible inks in traditional paper letters, plus simple ciphers such as simple substitution with nulls; computerized image steganography is not mentioned.

"We are seen as loud, arrogant and completely self-absorbed," said Reinhard, chairman emeritus of the advertising agency DDB Worldwide. "People see in us the ultimate arrogance -- assuming that everybody wants to be like us."

Slowly, and at first reluctantly, I have come to the conclusion that this chronic stimulation, temptation and seduction by comic books, both their content and their alluring advertisements of knives and guns, are contributing factors to many children's maladjustment.

All comic books with their words and expletives in balloons are bad for reading, but not every comic book is bad for children's minds and emotions. The trouble is that the "good" comic books are snowed under by those which glorify violence, crime and sadism.

• Crimes shall never be presented in such a way as to create sympathy for the criminal, to promote distrust of the forces of law and justice, or to inspire others with a desire to imitate criminals.
  
• Divorce shall not be treated humorously nor shall be represented as desirable.
  
• Scenes dealing with, or instruments associated with walking dead, torture vampires and vampirism, ghouls, cannibalism, and werewolfism are prohibited.
  
• Females shall be drawn realistically without exaggeration of any physical qualities.

The National Security Agency has been secretly collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans, using data provided by AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth, people with direct knowledge of the arrangement told USA TODAY.

The NSA program reaches into homes and businesses across the nation by amassing information about the calls of ordinary Americans — most of whom aren't suspected of any crime. This program does not involve the NSA listening to or recording conversations. But the spy agency is using the data to analyze calling patterns in an effort to detect terrorist activity, sources said in separate interviews.

"It's the largest database ever assembled in the world," said one person, who, like the others who agreed to talk about the NSA's activities, declined to be identified by name or affiliation. The agency's goal is "to create a database of every call ever made" within the nation's borders, this person added.

For the customers of these companies, it means that the government has detailed records of calls they made — across town or across the country — to family members, co-workers, business contacts and others.

The blind bush bots have gotten me half convinced going to the polls in Nov are a waste of time. I voted for W twice and his old man before that and Tom Delay.

The GOP left my congressman out to dry and now they pander to the illegals instead of taxpaying US citizens.

“He didn’t get the contract,” Jackson continued. “Why should I reward someone who doesn’t like the president, so they can use funds to try to campaign against the president? Logic says they don’t get the contract. That’s the way I believe.”

Isn't David Blaine a magician? Isn't he supposed to do magic?
Sitting in a ball isn't magic. I could do that.

At a public appearance, Bush's pointman in the Office of National Intelligence was asked if the NSA was wiretapping Bush's political enemies. When Hayden dodged the question, the questioner repeated, "No, I asked, are you targeting us and people who politically oppose the Bush government, the Bush administration? Not a fishing net, but are you targeting specifically political opponents of the Bush administration?" Hayden looked at the questioner, and after a silence called on a different questioner.

What’s up with the old protestors?

Is it just me, or do all the protestors I see leaping out from audience at various BUSHCO appearances look… well… old? What up with that? Did you see the ones who leapt out at Rummy yesterday? I mean I know that kids are DUMB today, and getting dumber thanks to the anti-intellectual, theocracy we seem to be living under, but still. Where are the young protestors?

Is X-Box really that compelling? (Yes) Is Jack Bauer really that exciting? (No)

Remember the pictures of the 60’s? Since I wasn’t there I have no choice but to recall the documentation. And since you weren’t there, neither do you. And if you were there, you’d be busy now waiting to lunge at Condi Rice from beneath the chafing dish at her thrice daily prayer breakfasts.* But in the 60’s the protests were filled with young people. Hideously dressed, pretentious young people, but young people none the less. I always felt that protests in the 60’s were like Coachella/Orgy/Drug-fueled-orgy kinds of events. But now, it seems like the same people who marched, demonstrated, and threw pies in the face of power then, are the ones who do it today. And no one wants to have a drug fueled orgy with Cindy Sheehan.

Today, youth rebellion seems more about scoring weed and listening to terrible rage-rock (Linkin Park, I am staring at you with 10,000 megavolts of eat-shit-and-fall-into-a-terminal-coma-where-you-still-feel-pain eye). And that’s pathetic. I don’t get it at all. Being 30, I am undraftable, but I would expect some of these kids to be worried. After all, Iran is fucking HUGE, we’re gonna need a whole lot more of their pasty corpses if we’re going to stop Iran from …

Oh crap, this Xbox game just fell into my hands. Gotta run.

*Only Hobbits eat breakfast more frequently than the Bush peeps.

[Vatican astronomer Guy Consolmagno] described creationism, whose supporters want it taught in schools alongside evolution, as a "kind of paganism" because it harked back to the days of "nature gods" who were responsible for natural events.

Bush's advisers have almost certainly estimated how low his poll numbers can fall and still ensure that, once the bombs fall, a majority in the US will bounce back to support him.

JB: So I notice you guys have been really involved with promoting the military.

SE: Well, they actually came to us, believe it or not. Somebody in the Navy loves this band, because they used ‘Awake’ for three years and then they came to us and re-upped the contract for another three years for ‘Sick of Life.’ So, I don’t know. They just feel like that music, [laughs] someone in that place thinks that the music is very motivating for recruit commercials I guess. And hey, I’m an American boy so it’s not… I’m proud of it.

"I thought some of it was funny, but I think it got a little rough," Hoyer said. "He is the president of the United States, and he deserves some respect."

At a roundtable lunch with reporters a couple of years ago, two who were present say, he cut his buffalo steak in bite-size pieces the moment it arrived, then proceeded to salt each side of each piece.

The founding company, MindArk, makes money because all of the tools used by characters in the game have a finite life and need to be repaired.

If a hunter needs to continue using his weapon to make money, he must pay MindArk to repair it.

FLASH: Colbert averaging just over one million viewers a night, year to date (1,077,000] on COMEDY CENTRAL, which is less than FOXNEWS's 6-11pm line-up...

• Stephen Colbert ruthlessly disembowelling Bill Kristol
  
• Colbert capping Bush's ass at the White House Correspondents' Dinner