"You may have forgotten this, Secretary Rumsfeld,This should be a no-brainer, but the Supreme Court will be deciding this question later this year: Do prisoners have the right to undergo DNA testing to prove their innocence?http://www.teambio.org/2009/03/02/dna-testing-for-prisoners/
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The mass psychosis that has gripped the Republican Party continues unabated. Not content with having turned supreme leadership over to Rush Limbaugh, the Politico reports that all 41 Republican Senators have signed on to a letter demanding that Obama nominate rejected Bush judicial appointees to the federal bench as a signal of changing the tone in Washington (!) and consult in advance (and obtain approval it would seem) with Republicans about nominees from their respective states or they will filibuster his judicial appointees. (For someone reason I am unable to link.)
I say bring it on. Then Harry Reid and company can begin the process of killing the filibuster once and for all and the Republicans can be reduced to the utter irrelevance that they so richly deserve.
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A Trickle When We Need A Flood: http://griperblade.blogspot.com/2009/03/trickle-when-we-need-flood.html
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Jesus' General has completed an Amazon review for Joe the Plumber's new book, Joe the Plumber: Fighting for the American Dream.
Please give it a "Most Helpful" recommendation, so it gets featured as the top positive review.
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A man is appealing a recent loss before the United States Court of Appeals in a very disturbing decision. In the video below, Deputy Jonathan Rackard of the Washington County Florida repeated uses of a taser on Jesse Buckley who is merely sitting and crying next to a road. The Eleventh Circuit voted 2-1 that the Eighth Amendment was not violated in the case, reversing a decision from the trial court.
Continue reading 'Eleventh Circuit Rules that Video of Officer Repeatedly Tasering a Sobbing Man Sitting By the Road is Not a Constitutional Violation'
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One in every 31 adults now in prison in America - a 274 percent increase in 25 years. Story here.
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Did Mormons posthumously baptize Hitler, Dracula, Ted Bundy and Others?
When the leadership of the Mormon Church ordered its followers to donate $20 million to the Proposition 8 hate campaign in California last year — instead of, say, giving the money to feed the hungry or house the homeless — the leaders also invited unwanted scrutiny of the church's bizarre practices and beliefs.
One of the strangest of these is the practice of "saving" dead people through posthumous baptism, which they call "proxy rites." According to this belief, the dead are not automatically saved. Instead, the rites give them the option to choose salvation in the afterlife.
In a letter to the Salt Lake City CityWeekly last week, local resident Helen Radkey claimed that the list of famous people who have received these rites includes dictators and their henchmen like Adolf Hitler, Martin Bormann, Benito Mussolini, Josef Stalin and Mao Tse-Tung; pirates like Blackbeard and Jean and Pierre Lafitte; and gangsters like Al Capone, Bonnie and Clyde and Benjamin "Bugsy" Seigel, who was, of course, Jewish.
http://www.pensitoreview.com/2009/03/03/did-mormons-posthumously-baptize-hitler-dracula-ted-bundy/
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The bible is not an economics textbook: http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/03/the_bible_is_not_an_economics.php
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no more glaciers in glacier national park by 2020? It's an oft-repeated statistic that the glaciers at Montana's Glacier National Park will disappear by the year 2030. But Daniel Fagre, a U.S. Geological Survey ecologist who works at Glacier, says the park's namesakes will be gone about ten years ahead of schedule. - National Geographic News
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Fresh off their rebranding, the sociopaths previously known a Blackwater are finding out that people have long memories :
Critics are calling for Southwestern College to rescind a deal that sends students in its police academy to a facility run by the company formerly known as Blackwater.
Southwestern's governing board unanimously approved an agreement in January to offer Blackwater Lodge and Training Center the use of rooms on campus in exchange for use of Blackwater's shooting range.
Since the agreement was approved in January, Blackwater Worldwide has renamed itself Xe and changed the name of its Otay Mesa facility to U.S. Training Center Southwest. The center is blocks from the police academy Southwestern College runs on its Otay Mesa satellite campus.
"I don't think you associate with people involved in criminal activities," said Liz Sisco, chairwoman of the college's art department. "I don't want to be sending that example to our students that this is OK."
In Washington in January, five Blackwater employees pleaded not guilty to manslaughter charges in connection with the shooting deaths of 17 Iraqis in Baghdad in 2007. A sixth employee pleaded guilty.
Rep. Bob Filner, D-San Diego, said Friday that he intends to send a letter to the college board asking it to rescind the deal.
[...]
Brian Bonfiglio, an Xe vice president, said his company is trying to be a good neighbor. Bonfiglio said that he did not ask for use of college facilities but that college representatives offered it as a goodwill gesture.
"What is wrong with us providing a state-of-the-art facility to men and women who will potentially answer the call when we dial 911 and we need help?" Bonfiglio said.
Oddly enough, when some old lady calls 911 because her cat is stuck in a tree she doesn't expect a group of grim-faced armed men to show up, gun the cat down, set the tree on fire, and then speed away in a heavily armored Hummer.
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Moonie Times: Obama insufficiently grateful to Bush for plunging US into bloody, costly quagmire: http://firedoglake.com/2009/03/03/washington-times-obama-insufficiently-grateful-to-bush-for-plunging-us-into-bloody-costly-quagmire/
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Who watched the torture tapes?
As you know, the DOJ informed the ACLU and Judge Alvin Hellerstein that CIA destroyed 92 tapes showing torture.
In the meantime, the CIA can now identify the number of videotapes that were destroyed, which is information implicated by [Hellerstein's order that ACLU gets information responsive to its FOIA request]. Ninety-two videotapes were destroyed.
The ACLU will soon be given:
- A copy of the CIA Office of Inspector General's Special Review Report--a redacted copy of which had previously been supplied to the ACLU--with the details regarding the torture tapes un-redacted.
- A list identifying and describing each of the destroyed records.
- A list of any summaries or transcripts describing the destroyed records' content.
- Identification of any witnesses who may have viewed the videotapes or retained custody before their destruction.
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Tanzania is launching a nationwide exercise urging the public to identify those behind dozens of murders of people with albinism. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7918960.stm
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Sad fact: the average price of a home in Detroit today is $7,500.
Seven thousand five hundred dollars.
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AIG, who has just received their 4th bailout, spends millions on PR firms now on their payroll Read the whole story: Breakingviews.com
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John Dean: Bush almost became 'unconstitutional dictator': http://rawstory.com/news/2008/John_Dean_Bush_terror_memos_close_0303.html
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Helicopter Ben says the banking industry may need a bigger bailout! http://bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aabXQOXBRk8E&refer=worldwide
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A soon-to-be-released NBC News-Wall Street Journal poll shows that the American people overwhelmingly side with the Democrats over the Republicans on the economy. On the question of which party the public trusts on the issue, the breakdown in the latest survey is as follows:
Who will do a better job of getting the U.S. out of a recession?Democrats: 48 percent
Republicans: 20 percent
Both equally: 8 percent
Neither: 16 percent
While some in the establishment media continue to buy into the GOP ruse that voters are siding with them over President Obama or the Democratic Party on the economy, the numbers are clear -- the Republicans have little credibility on the issue, and the public knows it. Barack Obama and his allies on Capitol Hill still have an immense amount of political capital when it comes to the economy, and Republicans standing in their way (and that's pretty much the entirety of the party, minus a tiny group of northeastern Senators) are on weak footing.
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Talk about getting money from a stone:
Dozens of specially trained agents work on the third floor of DCM Services here, calling up the dear departed's next of kin and kindly asking if they want to settle the balance on a credit card or bank loan, or perhaps make that final utility bill or cellphone payment.
The people on the other end of the line often have no legal obligation to assume the debt of a spouse, sibling or parent. But they take responsibility for it anyway.
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In case you had any doubt that they knew damn well what they were doing
Perhaps the executives at Countrywide weren't incompetent after all. Perhaps they realized that they stood to gain more by wrecking the country's economy than by doing business the right way:
Fairly or not, Countrywide Financial and its top executives would be on most lists of those who share blame for the nation's economic crisis. After all, the banking behemoth made risky loans to tens of thousands of Americans, helping set off a chain of events that has the economy staggering.
So it may come as a surprise that a dozen former top Countrywide executives now stand to make millions from the home mortgage mess.
Stanford L. Kurland, Countrywide's former president, and his team have been buying up delinquent home mortgages that the government took over from other failed banks, sometimes for pennies on the dollar. They get a piece of what they can collect.
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Pointing the gun at your own head and saying, "Nobody move or the idiot gets it" http://brilliantatbreakfast.blogspot.com/2009/03/pointing-gun-at-your-own-head-and.html
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Noted fibber and exorcist Bobby Jindal masters the preemptive apology on Larry King last night:
Jindal also responded to Michael Steele's recent flap about Limbaugh: "I'm glad he apologized. I think the chairman is a breath of fresh air for the party. As I said before, I think Rush is a leader for many conservatives and says things that people are concerned about."
Here's the biggest surprise: I am not only turned off by people who voted for Barack Obama, but I am also turned off by people that voted for my dad—or more so, obsessive supporters of my dad," she continued. "Recently, over dinner, a guy started explaining his reasons for supporting President Obama during the election (I didn't ask, I think the poor guy felt guilty) and I immediately found any attraction I had previously had dissipate. But same thing happens if a guy starts talking about all the reasons why my father should be president.
The level of introspection that heiresses have seems mighty low these days. It probably has not occurred to her that with Papa's Thighs and Momma's Eyes, without the zillions of greenbacks in suds funds behind her, she most likely would be alone on a Saturday night anyway.
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I don't suppose we'll ever know what really happened on 9/11, but this sure is interesting. Is Susan Lindauer mentally ill, was she a spy, and was she set up to keep from telling what she knew?
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Why are the rich paying most of the taxes?
Because the rest of us are doing so poorly, half of us don't owe any.
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Months after Bush is gone, Rep. Steve King (R-IA) will be introducing a "Victory in Iraq" resolution, "chronicling the success of the troop surge in Iraq" http://thinkprogress.org/2009/03/03/king-victory-iraq/
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To the fainting couches!
Rethuglicans upset because President Hussein had a beer at a basketball game http://www.wwl.com/Obama-beer-sparks-controversy/3951383
Good for him.
The reichwingnuts need to chill out, unclench their sphincters, get a life and.......have a beer.
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"An imprisoned Salvadoran immigrant has been charged with the 2001 murder of a former U.S. government intern, a case that helped end a California congressman's career, police and prosecutors said on Tuesday." [Washington Post]
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Orrin Hatch, taker of massive pharmaceutical cash
After trying to abolish filibusters of judicial nominees in '05, GOP threatens to filibuster Obama's nominees http://thinkprogress.org/2009/03/03/gop-filibuster-letter/
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Mike Pence, who compared Iraq to an Indianan market:
On CNN this afternoon, Rick Sanchez asked Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN) — the Chairman of the House Republican Caucus — if he agreed with Rush Limbaugh's claim that "all Republicans want Barack Obama to fail." Pence at first demurred, calling Sanchez's question a "nice try." "I know what Rush Limbaugh meant," he said. But after listing off several caricatured aspects of Obama's economic recovery plan, Pence said, "[Y]ou bet, we want those policies to fail":
SANCHEZ: Did you hear what Rush Limbaugh said, "the dirty little secret is all Republicans want Barack Obama to fail?" Very direct question to you, Sir. Do you want Barack Obama to fail?
PENCE: Come on, Rick. Nice try. I know what Rush Limbaugh meant. … Everyone like me, Rush Limbaugh and others who believe in limited government, who believes in conservative values, wants the policies that this administration is bringing forward, higher taxes, massive increase in government spending, a huge increase in the role of government, in our daily lives, departure from traditional values. You bet, we want those policies to fail. Because, Rick, we know big government, increases in debt, the micromanagement of the economy out of Washington, DC is a policy that will fail.
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