Two condominium owners who are suing Southern Methodist University say they need sworn statements from Bush and his wife, Laura, about what SMU officials told them in private meetings before SMU was selected as the site of the presidential library. Attorneys for the former president have until 5 pm. today to file papers in state court outlining the legal rationale for their position that the couple should not be required to give depositions.
Any lawmaker or other person who objects to funding stem cell research, or using frozen blastocysts, should sign a contract saying that, should they ever have an illness that could be benefit from the use of embryonic stem cells (blastocysts), they'd have to deny themselves treatment.
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Hi-Caliber
Conservative Rapper
Dear Mr. Hi-Caliber,
One of my men sent me the address to your "Space Page" and suggested that I invite you to perform at our Men's Purity Revival and Survivalist Fair in October. I think that's a swell idea. We want to really get the young men involved this year.
I know all the kids these days like the rap music. I thought it was pretty groovy back when I first heard The Jaggerz do it back in '71 or so. Do you like The Jaggerz? "Rap, rap, rap, they call him the rapper." I love that, hahaha, or should I say "lol," hahaha. See, I still know a thing or two about what the kids are digging.
Anyway, we're looking at Las Vegas in October. It's going to be a heck of a lot of manly fun. We'll have purity discussions and films, military-style training, Christian Spartan-style wrestling, spiritual warfare, and an Oktoberfest party where we'll drink real near beer and do that Bavarian dance where guys slap each other.
Former Israeli President Moshe Katsav is expected to be indicted as early as this week on charges of rape and sexual assault involving multiple women who worked for the government. He will also be charged with obstruction of justice by Attorney General Menachem Mazuz.
Continue reading 'Former Israeli President Moshe Katsav To Be Indicted For Rape and Sexual Assault'
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Glenn Greenwald links to this important commentary by Roger Cohen, about the necessity of evolving and maturing our approach to the Israel/Palestine conflict. I want to highlight three keys:
Like Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah has long been treated by the United States as a proscribed terrorist group. This narrow view has ignored the fact that both organizations are now entrenched political and social movements without whose involvement regional peace is impossible.
President Obama likes to think of himself as a pragmatist. Pretending that Hamas and Hezbollah are not legitimate entities is not pragmatic.
Israel, from the time of Ben Gurion, built its state by creating facts on the ground, not through semantics. Many of its leaders, including Ehud Olmert and Tzipi Livni, have been on wondrous political odysseys from absolutist rejection of division of the land to acceptance of a two-state solution. Yet they try to paint Hamas as irrevocably absolutist. Why should Arabs be any less pragmatic than Jews?
Keep reading: http://www.theleftcoaster.com/archives/013885.php
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Christians it appears have been fuming every time that they go into a store and see Kosher salt but look endlessly and unsuccessfully for the Christian salt. Enter former barber Joe Godlewski. Godlewski does not just share God's moniker, he became God's instrument in creating "Blessed Christian Salt," sea salt blessed by an Episcopalian priest.
Not since Lot's wife was turned into a pillar of salt has there been such excitement over spiritually-correct sodium chloride.
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Doing hard time in Manhatten: why America's most prominent fraudster remains under house arrest
Gosh, Bernie looks like he doesn't have a care in the world. Very relaxed for a guy who admitted he defrauded 50 billion from friends, acquaintances and a whole lot of others. Maybe Bernie knows something the rest of us don't. Maybe he's expecting the kind of justice available only to someone like him and certain other Zion special elitists. Like Scooter Libby, for example. He never did a day in jail. Or that old Zionist codger Ben Ami Kadish, who spent his whole treasonous life turning over America's nuclear secrets to Apartheid Israel. He's out on bail too. He's already been told he has no jail time in his future. Why shouldn't Bernie think he could beat this rap? It was only money that he stole. In fact it's probably reasonable for him to believe so.
Keep reading: http://homo-sapien-underground.blogspot.com/2009/03/doing-hard-time-in-manhattanwhy.html
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Billy Graham has a column in which he answers letters — A recent letter will make you laugh.
That's a real problem, and I'm sure we all know someone who has gone off the deep end with some weird belief. That's not the funny part; the good bit is Graham's oblivious reply.
DEAR S. McM: One characteristic of cults is that they strongly believe they alone are right in their beliefs and everyone else is wrong. Thus they reject the central truths of the Bible that Christians have held in common for almost 2,000 years and substitute their own beliefs for the clear teaching of Scripture.
Shorter Billy Graham: The difference between their cult and mine is that they think they have the absolute truth, when I know that I do.
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Oops
Feeling safer yet? Baxter, an International pharmaceutical company based in America, has just been caught mixing live Avian Flu virus (H5N1) with common flu virus, in a flu vaccine. Baxter International's research facility in Orth-Donau Austria was the facility that shipped the contaminated flu vaccine to other facilities in the Czech Republic, Slovenia and Germany. The incident was discovered by a technician in a facility in the Czech Republic, who injected ferrets with the vaccine as a normal test procedure. The ferrets died.
Let that sink in.
But it's worse than that.
H5N1 is not easily transmissible between people. However, the common flu virus that it was mixed with does easily infect people. The real danger in this incident is that the two viruses could have mixed genetic material and mutated when injected into tens of thousands of people, and could have created a hybrid virus that was both deadly, and transmissible.
Now, will Baxter be investigated? They just got caught releasing a Level-3 Bio-Hazard with a potential to sicken and even kill people. It's being covered by the Canadian and European press and yet we're not hearing a word about this here.
The world just averted a possible health care catastrophe. But, just because they've been caught, they have not been stopped. And like 9/11, as long as these people are left unpunished, they will not stop - until we stop them.
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Foul language alert!
The Rude Pundit on the Norm Coleman/Al Franken fiasco: http://rudepundit.blogspot.com/2009/03/photos-that-make-rude-pundit-want-to.html
And here's another one from him: John McCain won't eat pork: http://rudepundit.blogspot.com/2009/03/john-mccain-wont-eat-pork-whole-battle.html
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They might not glow in the dark
Yet.
Cattle in southeast Texas have high incidence of DNA damage. Scientists have found a link to large factories that emit toxic substances
For 200 years, Randy Mumme's family has raised cattle on the same plot of southeast Texas land. Then, about 10 years ago, something began to change. His steers were losing weight. Cows were miscarrying; one gave birth to a calf with three legs. Many calves were stillborn.
The family's ranching practices had not changed over the centuries, but the environment had: his ranch is four miles downwind of large industrial plants that spew tons of carcinogens and other toxic substances into the air. Mumme and other ranchers in point comfort suspect the factories are contributing to the ill-health of their cattle.
Now scientists have found DNA evidence that suggests the ranchers' suspicions might be true, heightening concerns about their cattle as well as their own health. -environmental health news
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Senator David Vitter, who was caught with prostitutes but still has his job in the US Senate, continues to rail against earmarks in the Omnibus bill even though HIS earmarks are worth $249 million for 142 projects.
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House minority whip Eric Cantor claims that spending 15 minutes making a statement about reversing Bush's stem-cell policies is just an attempt to distract people from the economy, which Obama has been talking about every day for the past two years.
In other news, the same party that brought us Terri Schiavo, the "war on Christmas," freedom fries and flag pins is now lecturing us on "distractions."
Go fu*k yourselves.
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Joe the Plumber /campaign prop/journalist/failed author was in Wisconsin this weekend as part of a meeting of some of the state's conservative leaders.
Dressed in his trademark work clothes and boots, Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher gave a speech at the "Defending the American Dream Summit" at Midwest Airlines Center in Milwaukee on Saturday. He urged the estimated 800 people in attendance to remain politically active.
The meeting served as a rallying point for a Republican party that suffered big losses in the last two election cycles. For the first time in 23 years, Democrats have control of the state's Legislature and governor's office.
The message of the conference was made emphatically clear. A 7-foot tall, 48-foot long sign read, "No New Taxes."
Next stop: refereeing dwarf wrestling on the county fair circuit which is, unsurprisingly, a lateral career move from appearing at CPAC.
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Springtime for Pariahs
This is good but not good enough:
But for Mr. Yoo, a Berkeley law professor, the swift exit from the war crimes board was only the beginning of his troubles. For more than four years, the Justice Department ethics office has been investigating his work and that of a few of his colleagues. A convicted terrorist has filed a lawsuit blaming Mr. Yoo for abuses he says he endured. Law students have led protests, and the Berkeley City Council even passed a resolution in December calling for Mr. Yoo's prosecution for war crimes.
The Obama administration last week began releasing more secret memorandums written by Mr. Yoo and others that made such wide-ranging claims about presidential power that Senator Arlen Sphincter, Republican of Pennsylvania, called them "shocking."
Keep reading: http://tbogg.firedoglake.com/2009/03/09/springtime-for-pariahs/
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Howard Dean - just because
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I heart Margaret and Helen
If the Republicans want new leadership, they simply need to flush
Margaret, do me a favor and ask that Republican husband of yours a quick question: During this very difficult time for the country, who does he want in charge? A Harvard law graduate and former constitutional law professor, or a disc jockey with a drug addiction who flunked out of college, divorced three wives and publicly made fun of a disabled person? Because that is the choice we have between Barack Obama as leader of the free world and Rush Limbaugh as leader of the Republican party.
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Today President Obama told administration officials not to rely on any of Bush's signing statements to cover their asses and do whatever they damned well please. Anyone desiring to invoke a Bush-era (error) signing statement would have to have the imprimatur of the Attorney General before hiding behind them.
He also said that he might use them himself if Congress sends him legislation that has provisions he decides are unconstitutional. He also pledged to use a modest approach when doing so, but said there was a role for the practice if used appropriately and not abused. "In exercising my responsibility to determine whether a provision of an enrolled bill is unconstitutional, I will act with caution and restraint, based only on interpretations of the Constitution that are well-founded," the President wrote in a memo to the heads of all departments and agencies in the executive branch.
Bush overused signing statements in an effort to consolidate executive power and further the theory of the 'Unitary Executive.' He employed the tactic twice as many times as all previous presidents combined. He used a signing statement to ignore the ban on torture and to keep congress in the dark after the legislative branch passed legislation that would have mandated that congress be fully apprised of how the Justice Department was using the Patriot Act.
In the memo, President Obama wrote that "Particularly since omnibus bills have become prevalent, signing statements have often been used to ensure that concerns about the constitutionality of discrete statutory provisions do not require a veto of the entire legislation."
The policy articulated today is entirely consistent with what he said during the presidential campaign when he was asked about them directly on a candidate questionnaire that was compiled by the Boston Globe. He said at that time that Bush's aggressive application of signing statements was an abuse of power, but that he would use them too, albeit in a more restrained manner.
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Thanks, KBR!
Agent Orange - the next generation
The Oregon Guardsmen who deployed with the 1st Battalion, 162nd Infantry Division (1-162) in 2003 were more concerned with Baathist and Hussein loyalists than they were with the ever-pervasive orange dust that coated their boots, got into the fabric of their BDUs, and caked on their skin. When it blew into one guardsman's MRE, he washed the stuff off his chicken patty with water from his canteen and ate it anyway.
The dust was Hexavalent Chromium (Cr (VI), a known carcinogen. Keep reading: http://theygaveusarepublic.com/showDiary.do;jsessionid=91697C51FBE5E4F8C602DC47FEAF941C?diaryId=2390
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Private Prisons Making Big Bucks
No shortage of "guilty Blacks" in America Link
Excerpt:
While the nation's economy flounders, business is booming for The GEO Group Inc., a private prison firm that is paid millions by the U.S. government to detain undocumented immigrants and other federal inmates. In the last year and a half, GEO announced plans to add a total of at least 3,925 new beds to immigration lockups in five locations.
The Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency and the U.S. Marshals Service, which hire the company, will fill the beds with inmates awaiting court and deportation proceedings.
GEO reported impressive quarterly earnings of $20 million on February 12, 2009, along with an annual income
of $61 million for 2008 – up from $38 million the year before. But the company's share value is not the only thing
that's growing. Behind the financial success and expansion of the for-profit prison firm, there are increasing charges of negligence, civil rights violations, abuse and even death.
Bartcop says: Any time a person or entity makes a "mistake" that puts extra money (or power) in their pocket, expect them to make that "mistake" again and again and again.
This GEO group gets paid per inmate - so they'll never run out of inmates.
Some guy is up for parole next week - that means decreased revenue for GEO - so look for that inmate to "get in a fight" or something that keeps him generating money for his Rethug jailers.
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Saved a child's life? Bad Catholic! Link
Excerpt:
Archbishop Sobrinho has apparently made no mention of the girl's stepfather, who's confessed to raping her. People who helped save a little girl from physical and emotional suffering, and possibly death? Bad Catholics! God disapproves! Child rapists, on the other hand? Well, historically, those have been some of the most distinguished members of our organization.
Damn, I believe he just slapped the Catholics with a carp. Of course, they deserve it.
They could decide TODAY to become "the church that no longer rapes children," but they haven't quite taken that plunge
Meanwhile, they want to be our moral superiors? That'll be tough - since we're not raping any kids.
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As you listen to the right-tards scream and froth at the mouth about how a tax hike on those making over $250K/year would "destroy America", know that we're talking about 2% of the population: http://eb-misfit.blogspot.com/2009/03/our-economy-difference-between-party-of.html
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Why have all the violent calls for revolution or secession in America always had something to do with taxes and/or property while the non-violent movements have all been about expanding individual liberty and human rights?
Chuck Norris is calling for violent overthrow of the government. Not so long ago you could get a visit from the Secret Service for wearing the wrong T-shirt. Now you can advocate the assassination of the President, you can advocate the violent overthrow of the government by exhorting people to join up with freelance militias, and that's all OK.
What country do we live in?
UPDATE: Now these lunatics are sending threatening letters to citizens they perceive to be the enemy. I guess this is OK when it comes from the right wing too. After all, they've been harassing and threatening women's health clinic workers for years with no consequences unless they actually kill someone - or set off bombs at the Olympics.
When someone gets hurt from all this, will Chuck Norris and Glenn Beck take responsibility?
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The MINORITY party is demanding control over the steering wheel and has sent a letter to Obama demanding that the Senate Judiciary Committee, now led by Patrick Leahy, respect the time-honored procedure of blue slipping for judicial nominees to give them a route to kill nominees they don't like. Blue slipping is the procedure whereby a senator from a judicial nominees home state can prevent that nominee from getting a committee vote merely by refusing to respond to a perfunctory letter from the committee chairman about the nomination.
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Don't forget, we're still fighting two wars ...
Army captain charged with stealing $690,000 Link
He just picked up some taxpayer money that was laying around
Sunday in Iraq: 1 contractor, 61 Iraqis killed, 84 wounded: http://www.antiwar.com/updates/?articleid=14367
Iraqi women pimping out their daughters: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1883696,00.html
We've created hundreds of thousands of them, and now 'Iraqi widows struggle in new roles as breadwinners': http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/meast/03/07/iraq.women/?iref=mpstoryview
As of one year ago, the Iraqi Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs declared that there were 4.5 million Iraqi orphans with 500,000 living in streets without any home or family.
Aljazeera English also reports on the problem of rape as a weapon of war in Afghanistan, deployed by warlords and clans in their internecine struggles.
Women we freed in Afghanistan:
Iraqi women are struggling to regain the rights they lost with the American occupation, which was marketed to the US public as a liberation of Iraqi women!
And watch this video about the "silent emergency" the women in Iraq are having: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xU-UVFzF2DQ&eurl=http://www.juancole.com/
All of this is being done for the low price of $12 billion per month. But we'll be out of Iraq in 2011, and will be sending more troops to Afghanistan.
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Getty Images
"…Sometimes I think half the reason Obama ran for president is so Michelle would have a platform to show off her biceps… She's made her point. Now she should put away Thunder and Lightning."
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