Politics
evolvingthoughts | July 19, 2007
In yet further evidence that due process is a bulwark against the arrogance and incompetence, not to say potential police statery, of intelligence agencies, it turns out that the core piece of evidence against Dr Haneef, the Indian doctor being detained by the Australian government against the law, is wrong.
The prosecutor alleged that Haneef's SIM card was found among the wreckage of the bombed out car in Glasgow. It turns out that it was intact, in one of two mobile phones, in Liverpool, held by his cousin Sabeel Ahmed. Ahmed is not charged with anything other than not informing the…
jlynch | July 19, 2007Remember this?
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just…
tlambert | July 19, 2007David Roberts shows Your media at work:
People magazine reports that Al Gore's daughter Sarah just got married, revealing in the course of the article that Chilean sea bass was served at the rehearsal dinner.
In the Daily Telegraph, Australian Humane Society Rebecca Keeble writes that "only one week after Live Earth, Al Gore's green credentials slipped." Why? Because Chilean sea bass is endangered.
ABC politics columnist Jake Tapper, smelling the kind of vapid, gimmicky story upon which his profession thrives, asks, "could this be seen as the environmentalist version of Sen. David Vitter's…
oracknows | July 19, 2007Little did I know when I posted my first article on the evidence supporting health hazards due to secondhand smoke that it would end up dominating the comments of this blog for three full days and lead me to a site that's so full of pseudoscience, logical fallacies, and just plain B.S. that it is worthy of the title of the Whale.to of the tobacco nuts. Even less did I expect that the crankfest would spread to fellow SBer Mark's denialism blog as well. The sheer vitriol that some of these "smoking rights" advocates direct at any suggestion that SHS might be harmful, quite frankly, took me…
j7uy5 | July 19, 2007
Back in February, I
href="http://scienceblogs.com/corpuscallosum/2007/02/now_what_i_thought_things_were.php">wrote
about the irony of the Bush Administration touting their
efforts to improve food and drug safety, while at the same time
planning to close 7 of the 13 FDA laboratories.
In the interim, we have had all kinds of food and drug mishaps.
The FDA did not close any labs, but they also did not say
they had canceled their plans.
The closure plans came to light in December 2006 when PEER (
href="http://www.peer.org/news/news_id.php?row_id=824" rel="tag">Public
Employees…
j7uy5 | July 18, 2007The
Pentagon needs to crack down on KBR and other contractors, said Dorgan,
head of the Democratic Policy Committee. "It requires a change in
mind-set at the Pentagon, for them to slam their fist down on the table
and say, 'We're not going to put up with this anymore.' "
What got US Sen.
rel="tag">Byron Dorgan so upset? Perhaps
it was the fact the KBR continues to steal money from the American
people. Or at least they try. According to USA
Today:
href="http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2007-07-16-iraq-auditors_N.htm">Largest
Iraq contract rife with errors
By Matt…
tsmith | July 18, 2007The strange and tragic case of the Tripoli Six, a group of 5 Bulgarian nurses and one Palestinian doctor working in Tripoli, Libya, is finally drawing to a close. The six health workers had been found guilty of infecting up to 400 children in the hospital where they worked with HIV, and had previously been sentenced to death--even though the science had shown that the epidemic began prior to the arrival of the workers. This saga has been dragging on for the better part of a decade (Declan Butler at Nature has a very nice story here discussing the various twists and turns along the way), but…
oracknows | July 18, 2007The other day, in the course of posting about some deceptive quote-mining by someone who doesn't accept the science indicating that secondhand smoke is a health danger, I referenced the uber-crank of crank websites, Forces.org, a website so cranky that it denies not just health dangers from secondhand smoke, but rather that even smoking causes cancer in smokers!
Naturally, such a site was irresistable to Mark over at the denialism blog and he has some fun with it.
Sit back and enjoy.
Oh, and as has happened on my posts about the data supporting health dangers from secondhand smoke and about…
denialism | July 18, 2007Is it just me or is Tom Coburn recommending a policy of shoot first ask questions later for our borders?
The patrol's deadly force rules were questioned at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing concerning the conviction of two agents who shot a fleeing, unarmed drug trafficker and covered it up.
"Why is it wrong to shoot the [trafficker] after he's been told to stop?" asked Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Oklahoma.
A new low for Coburn.
evolvingthoughts | July 18, 2007
An Indian doctor working in Queensland, where I live, whose cousin was involved in the failed bombing plot in the UK, was detained apparently because he lent his prepaid SIM card to the cousin.
He was held without charge or bail for 13 days, under a magistrate's orders, which is barely acceptable. But the Australian Federal Police leaked information to the media that incriminated him. Then he was brought before a magistrate, who allowed him bail. Got that? The legal system worked to assess his alleged crime and the evidence offered to support the charge, and a magistrate decided the charge…
clock | July 17, 2007The Tripoli 6 had their death sentence commuted to life in prison. Revere has the details.
Update: There is more.
pharyngula | July 17, 2007It's not as good as we might have hoped — it was commuted to a life sentence, rather than expulsion from Libya — but at least they aren't going to be executed. Effect Measure has the story.
tsmith | July 17, 2007By now, regular readers will probably be familiar with The Clergy Letter Project spearheaded by Michael Zimmerman. Formulated in part to respond to the framing of the evolution controversy as a battle between science and religion, the letter now boasts more than 10,700 signatures from clergy, and have sponsored Evolution Sunday events for the past 2 years.
Well, Zimmerman has a new project now:
Our latest initiative is to create a list of scientists around the world who are willing to answer scientific questions posed by clergy who are supportive of modern science in general and evolution…
j7uy5 | July 16, 2007Apparently
it is now the role of the Chief Executive to tell
businesspersons how to run their business.
In the context of the pro and con lobbying over the proposed expansion
of the State
Children’s Health Insurance Program, pharmaceutical
companies decided to join the pro side. After all, if more
children are insured, more of them will get prescription medication.
But is is not just the drug companies, it is a broad-spectrum
coalition:
According to the
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/09/washington/09child.html?ex=1341633600&en=f8f5eba22324ed32&ei=5090&partner=…
voltagegate | July 16, 2007At least they're letting some students finish up before they pull the entire rug out from under them:
The beleaguered Savannah River Ecology Lab hopes to remain open - but with vastly reduced staff and resources - through the end of the year due to commitments that require some scientists and graduate students to fulfill obligations associated with research grants.
"One of our main concerns right now is with these students," said Whit Gibbons, a senior ecologist and University of Georgia professor who has spent decades at the Aiken County lab.
The university, he said, has agreed to support…
oracknows | July 16, 2007"What do you think about second hand smoke?" he asked me. I sensed ulterior motives behind the question, but I wasn't sure. I suspected that he was just looking for an argument.
"It's bad," I joked.
"Some have told me that the studies don't show any health problems from second hand smoke," he replied.
"I'm sure 'some' have," I retorted somewhat sarcastically.
"No, really, is there any evidence," he replied. "I'm open-minded about this topic."
Somehow I doubted this, but I figured, what the heck, and did a little reviewing. It makes for some interesting reading.
The question of whether second…
pharyngula | July 15, 2007No, I don't mean the infamous cruise of diarrhea and vomiting, I mean something far, far worse — a trip that would make a week locked in the head with fluids gushing from your orifices seem enticing. I mean…
The National Review's Cruise.
Neo-cons. Casual racism. William F. Buckley, Dinesh D'Souza, Norman Podhoretz. Fear of Mexicans. Nuke the liberals. Bernard Lewis and Kate O'Beirne. Muslims must die. Desiccated ancient WASPs urging their kind to breed.
Steven King must ship out on one of these cruises sometime. It will spawn a horror novel so terrifying that it will need to be stored in a…
j7uy5 | July 15, 2007There
is a compilation of polls taken of Iraqis, and of service members, at
href="http://www.iraqanalysis.org/info/55">Iraqanalysis.org.
They say it is a comprehensive list. They invite anyone who
knows of a poll that they have not included to let them know.
oracknows | July 15, 2007As a result of my e-mailing the link to a mailing list I belong to asking members whether they thought it was outside the pale, Dr. Offit became aware of Mark's blog post about denialism in the Wall Street Journal editorial page that I castigated for its casually lumping Paul Offit's editorial on the Michael Moore movie Sicko in as an example of how the WSJ editorial page was a "clearinghouse for denialism." Moreover, Dr. Offit actually responded. I suggested that he post his response to Mark's blog as a comment, but instead he gave me his permission to post his e-mailed response on my blog,…
j7uy5 | July 14, 2007Knowing
full well that it violated the Constitution of the United
States, the State legislatures in
href="http://www.azstarnet.com/allheadlines/190122">Arizona,
Florida,
href="http://news.aol.com/elections-blog/2006/10/31/bush-lied-they-died-t-shirt-censored/">Louisiana,
Texas,
and
href="http://news.aol.com/elections-blog/2006/10/31/bush-lied-they-died-t-shirt-censored/">Oklahoma
have passed laws that ban the unauthorized use of names or
images of members of the Armed Forces.
This
was prompted by an Arizona businessman who started selling
t-shirts...
(The
t-shirts have…