Politics
aardvarchaeology | August 7, 2008In many people's opinion worldwide, US detainment of terrorism suspects at Guantanamo Bay is legally iffy. I mean, hello, habeas corpus? It is thus kind of interesting to learn about the first sentence pronounced for a Gitmo detainee, that of Salim Hamdan, Osama bin Laden's driver. Hamdan was captured after a firefight in Afghanistan in November 2001.
Here is an example of what kind of people are actually being kept at Guantanamo. The court in question is a military one, and so can be expected to hand out pretty harsh justice, but still. The sentence should give us a rough idea of how bad a…
gregladen | August 7, 2008OK, let's say it all together.
Minnesota is the state.
Minneapolis is a city in Minnesota.
Saint Paul is the Capitol of Minnesota.
The Republican National Convention will be in Saint Paul. Saint Paul Minnesota. Not Minneapolis.
Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, who is from a suburb of Saint Paul and who represents the sixth district to the US Congress in Minnesota (which is over on the other side of Minneapolis ... so she drives through both cities to visit her home town) should really know this.
But she does not.
U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann has joined CBS anchor Katie Couric with mixing…
clock | August 7, 2008It's not just McCain who does not understand the Internet, it's his operatives as well:
Spread John McCain's official talking points around the Web -- and you could win valuable prizes!
That, in essence, is the McCain campaign's pitch to supporters to join its new online effort, one that combines the features of "AstroTurf" campaigning with the sort of customer-loyalty programs offered by airlines, hotel chains, restaurants and the occasional daily newspaper.
On McCain's Web site, visitors are invited to "Spread the Word" about the presumptive Republican nominee by sending campaign-supplied…
tsmith | August 7, 2008So, after almost a week of intense media scrutiny and finger-pointing at USAMRIID scientist Bruce Ivins as the perpetrator of the 2001 anthrax attacks, the FBI has now released its documents pertaining to the case, and declares that Ivins was indeed their man. However, a lot of unanswered questions remain--about the investigation itself, the whole mess surrounding the anthrax attacks and what they meant to the "war on terror," and the science itself that linked the attack strain to Ivins' lab. A few of the remaining issues are discussed below...
First, as Glenn Greenwald notes, there was…
sb admin | August 7, 2008I usually don't stray into strictly political issues, but today's action by the Mayor of Detroit has me fuming. I've been avoiding blogging on this topic, but Kwame Kilpatrick always has a new criminal exploit fueled by his overwhelming arrogance. His latest idiocy will land him in jail for the night. Here's the basic story.
Kilpatrick is a bright and imposing young man (elected at 31) who had an unlimited political future. Detroit has a long history of producing brilliant African American political leaders, and Kilpatrick comes out of this tradition. His mother is Carolyn Cheeks…
terrasig | August 7, 2008So said Seth Grahame-Smith on Tuesday about the Paris Hilton video that responds to John McCain's ad comparing she and Britney Spears to Barack Obama.
I first saw the video when I was going to respond to a very nice comment here by Lisa Emrich, blogger at Brass and Ivory, musician extraordinaire, and founder of the Carnival of MS Bloggers. (btw, Brass and Ivory is widely regarded as one of the premiere sites not only for information on MS but, perhaps even more so, as providing tremendous insight on living with a disability - Lisa is a terrific writer).
So rather than post the video here, go…
pharyngula | August 7, 2008I'm afraid the odious Oklahoma legislator, Sally Kern, has opened her mouth again. She has declared herself a "cultural warrior for Judeo-Christian values. I despise the term "Judeo-Christian" — it's so fake, and such a transparent attempt to tie morality to religion. So what are these "Judeo-Christian" values?
"I am not saying everyone has to be Christian; this is not a homogenous nation," Kern said. "What you have to be is someone who believes in a Judeo-Christian ethic, in other words, in knowing there's a right and wrong.
That's it? Knowing that some things are bad to do and others are…
tqa | August 6, 2008
Sometimes the only thing that separates comedy from tragedy is the involvement of an actual living human being.
That certainly seems to be the case where today's military commission verdict in the trial of Salim Hamdan. Despite having the advantages of what we must, for the lack of a better word, call a legal system that was set up to give the prosecution the edge, despite the admission of hearsay evidence, despite the use of material taken from interviews that didn't come within a light year of the Miranda guidelines, and despite the use of secret prosecution testimony, the prosecution…
pharyngula | August 6, 2008Here's An Open Letter to Barack Obama that urges him to support a basic progressive agenda — sign it if you're sympathetic with its goals.
clock | August 6, 2008McCain campaign complained that media is not covering him before they complained that media is covering him. Another example of a debate between John McCain and John McCain? Well, when you have a bad product, it is best not to have it reviewed. There is a reason why crappy movies are not shown to critics before they are released in theaters. McCain can win if he never ever shows up on TV between now and November. That way, many will be duped into thinking he was still the charming maverick he was back in....when was it, 19th century?
Not that media is actually slamming McCain like they…
jlynch | August 6, 2008August 6, 2001, is the day that George W. Bush received the Presidential Daily Brief headlined, "Bin Laden determined to strike in U.S." The PDB stated that Al Qaeda maintained a support structure in the U.S. that could aid attacks, that one idea was to hijack U.S. airplanes, and that the FBI had detected "suspicious activity," including surveillance of federal buildings in New York. The memo also noted that the U.S. Embassy in the United Arab Emirates had received a warning that Al Qaeda was preparing an attack in the U.S. with explosives.
On August 6, 2001, Bush was at his ranch in the…
clock | August 6, 2008See Paris Hilton Responds to McCain Ad and more funny videos on FunnyOrDie.com
Of course, by the time off-shore drilling could produce anything (in about 10 years if we start drilling today), there will be no need for it if we have already moved a huge amount of our energy consumption to non-oil sources.
As Paris Hilton said: "....see you b*tches at the debates..."
oracknows | August 6, 2008Shot with my iPhone camera Friday at our campus bookstore:
Although I'm sure this was meant ironically (although one can never be sure), somehow I don't think that linking Al Gore with Jesus is a particularly good idea. Climate change "skeptics" already focus on Al Gore as though discrediting him somehow discredits behind science of anthropogenic climate change. Of course, Al Gore isn't a scientist. He is a popularizer and a politician; so even if his credibility were utterly destroyed it would have nothing to do with the validity of global climate science.
It's the same with other types…
gregladen | August 6, 2008This:
See Paris Hilton Responds to McCain Ad and more funny videos on FunnyOrDie.com
See more funny videos at Funny or Die
Appears to be a response to this:
So, here is the question. Who is hotter: Paris Hilton or Barack Obama?
pharyngula | August 6, 2008I think McCain is in big trouble when Paris Hilton runs intellectual circles around him.
drorzel | August 6, 2008Arts & Letters Daily sent me to an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education with the headline How Our Culture Keeps Students Out of Science. "Hey," I thought, "Good to see this issue getting some more attention." And, indeed, the article starts off well enough, with a decent statement of the problems in science education:
Back in 2003, the National Science Board issued a report that noted steep declines in "graduate enrollments of U.S. citizens and permanent residents" in the sciences. The explanation? "Declining federal support for research sends negative signals to interested…
illconsidered | August 6, 2008Global Warming is happening too slowly. Or so says Dan Gilbert, psycholgist and author of the book "Stumbling on Happiness".
Watch this video for a psychologist's explanation of why we are failing to act in the face of the global threat that is climate disruption.
(click here for the page at popcast if the embed doesn't work)
The video is about 15 minutes long and presents some evolutionary psychological reasons why global warming does not trigger our proper threat response mechanisms. He is a good speaker, so it is not as boring as it sounds like it could be!
(hat tip to China at the…
clock | August 5, 2008Last week, most of the attention of the media, Old and New, revolved around the question if it is McCain supporters or Obama supporters who are more likely to think that Britney Spears is teh hawt (dunno what the answer is, but I recall seeing some statistics about the overwhelming lead by the Red States in porn consumption, TV watching, numbers of adult establishments and number of visits to such establishments per capita, and this may or may not correlate with the perception of Britney Spears as attractive to certain subsets of the male population).
But her name has also been mentioned a…