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stcynic | October 31, 2006After a delay due to one of Hovind's attorneys being sick, his trial has resumed. An IRS agent testified today that the Hovinds claim to have no money while withdrawing hundreds of thousands of dollars a year from their accounts, always in amounts just under $10,000 to avoid having it reported. How convenient.
tfk | October 31, 2006The Capital Journal reports:
High-ranking Republican officials said Monday the president would most likely be in Kansas on Sunday.
"We would welcome him with open arms," said Jeffrey Black, campaign manager for U.S. Rep. Jim Ryun, R-Kan. "What an amazing opportunity to rally Kansans together."
Unfortunately for Ryun, they'll be rallying behind Nancy Boyda. Because the President isn't so popular any more, even in Kansas.
Black said a visit by Bush, if it materializes, would build momentum for the entire slate of GOP candidates.
"The Republicans are not worried about Jim Ryun," Black said.
No…
stcynic | October 31, 2006Sandefur's full time job is as a litigator for the Pacific Legal Foundation, specializing in eminent domain and economic rights cases. One of the cases he is involved with now is one that I brought to his attention with a post here last year. It's in Minnesota, where the state, bravely defending consumers against low prices, fined a company $140,000 for selling gas too cheaply at its 4 stations in the Minneapolis area. He writes at Positive Liberty about the brief he just filed with the court of appeals on behalf of Midwest Oil.
There is another potential case that I brought to his attention…
stcynic | October 31, 2006What kind of problems? Oh, nothing major. Vote for a Democrat, get counted as Republican. No big deal.
Debra A. Reed voted with her boss on Wednesday at African-American Research Library and Cultural Center near Fort Lauderdale. Her vote went smoothly, but boss Gary Rudolf called her over to look at what was happening on his machine. He touched the screen for gubernatorial candidate Jim Davis, a Democrat, but the review screen repeatedly registered the Republican, Charlie Crist...
A poll worker then helped Rudolf, but it took three tries to get it right, Reed said.
Gee, what could possibly go…
tqa | October 30, 2006Here are a few articles that I would have loved to have blogged about today - if I only had the time. In no particular order:
Via Afarensis, we learn that the American Museum of Natural History in New York now has the authority to grant PhDs. If nothing else, that would probably look pretty cool on a diploma.
Time Magazine has a letter written by a US Marine Corps officer up on its website. The letter has been authenticated, and the sentiments expressed in it match up fairly well with what I've been hearing from people I know who have come back from sandbox tours. That one is a must-read.…
tqa | October 30, 2006It's no secret that the current administration is not a big fan of the Endangered Species Act. Since Bush took office, only 56 species have been added to the list (for comparison, during both the Clinton and G.H.W. Bush administrations, an average of about 60 species were added every year). If cases where the listing was the result of a lawsuit settlement are excluded, that number goes down quite a bit - I know for a fact that the recent listing of 12 species of Hawaiian flies was forced as the result of a lawsuit.
In today's Washington Post, we find out about one of the reasons for the drop…
stcynic | October 30, 2006This happened about an hour away from me:
Police in the western Michigan community of Wyoming entered two classrooms at Lee Middle and High School on Thursday and announced there was a threat to the school, The Grand Rapids Press reported.
Students, who were unaware police were conducting a drill, were taken from the classroom into the halls, patted down by officers and asked what they had in their pockets, the newspaper said.
"Some of these kids were so scared, they just about wet their pants," said Marge Bradshaw, a parent with four children in Godfrey-Lee Schools. "I think it's pure wrong…
grrlscientist | October 30, 2006I found this wonderful word (below) in a book by the amazing and incomparable Virginia Woolf, entitled Mrs. Dalloway. As soon as I read this word, I was certain that she had invented it for her own purposes, and a quick look in the online dictionary revealed that she had. So dear readers, this is perhaps the first time this word has been formally defined on the internet;
Irreticences (ir-RET-uh-suhn-ses) [Latin ir- not reticÄre; to be silent]
n.
outspoken, to speak freely; talkative; voluble.
lack of restraint.
Usage: I can't keep up with them, Peter Walsh thought, as they marched up…
stcynic | October 30, 2006Sometimes I give away a Robert O'Brien Trophy to some mouth-breathing imbecile only to find, a few days later, an even more ridiculous example of human stupidity. And I'm afraid it's happened again. And frankly, I can't imagine finding anything any dumber than this column by Craig Smith at the Worldnutdaily. Who is Craig Smith? Well, his little bio at the end of the article announces him as "an author, commentator and popular media guest because he instantly engages audiences with his common-sense analyses of local, national and global trends." And then it says he wrote a book claiming that…
mikethemadbiologist | October 30, 2006Recently, I described how the most frequent killer of children in the developing world wasn't 'the Big Three' (AIDS, malaria, and TB), but boring old pneumonia. Well, the second greatest killer is diarhhea. And several factors are leading to increased treatment failure of diarhhea.
Actually, it's not that treatment is impossible because the diarhheal strains are resistant to many antibiotics. Treatment failure is occurring because the antibiotics that still work are not available in these countries. The problem is resistance plus poverty. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
First, some of…
stcynic | October 30, 2006The head of the GAO, David Walker, is now saying what I have been saying for years: our government - our nation - is headed toward a major fiscal crisis. We are a nation living vastly beyond our means in almost every possible way, both personal and governmental. We are running up hundreds of billions of dollars in new Federal debt every year on top of the trillions of dollars in unfunded future mandates for social security and medicare, and we are headed into a future where we will have fewer taxpayers to pay off those debts.
Their basic message is this: If the United States government…
stcynic | October 30, 2006Here's more of that good Christian charity. We're told constantly that school prayer will help keep kids from being immoral; apparently that doesn't hold true in Crawford County, Georgia. Two teachers there recently asked the school board to stop opening their meetings with prayer. Their reward? Vandalism.
The teachers asked the school board last month to stop giving invocations, which are routinely Christian and often mention Jesus Christ by name, at monthly board meetings and events such as new teacher orientation.
That same night, Laura Meldrum, a special education teacher, and Charles…
bushwells | October 30, 2006That is the acronym imprinted on the aqua-colored bracelet, a memento which I, along with a number of others, picked up yesterday at the registration table for the Never Give Up Hope 10K held at Seneca Creek State Park in Gaithersburg, MD. The letters represent "What Would Hope Do?" This woman possessed the fiercest tenacity, the most vociferous outrage, the warmest affection, and a marvelous sense of humor. As a follow-up to Kevin's post, here are a few photos and accompanying commentary.
At the registration table, we find a portrait of Hope and the basket containing the bracelets.…
purepedantry | October 30, 2006Check out this YouTube of bullets explodying things (is that even a word?) in slow motion!!!
grrlscientist | October 29, 2006This word is from the 29 October 2006 New York Times Magazine's feature, entitled "Islam and the Bomb" by Noah Feldman (now online). This week's issue is particularly good because, in addition to the article that I cite (below), it also contains a piece about the Taliban, several articles about bipolar disorder, an interview with a psychiatrist about depression and a piece about Alzheimer's disease.
Disapprobation (dis-ap-ruh-BEY-shuhn)
n.
Moral disapproval; condemnation.
an expression of strong disapproval; pronouncing as wrong or morally culpable.
Usage: In the immediate aftermath…
stcynic | October 29, 2006And good for them. New Jersey has turned down Federal funds for abstinence-only sex ed because of the absurd restrictions that come with it:
The Corzine administration has rejected federal abstinence education money because new rules won't let teachers discuss contraception and requires them to describe sex outside marriage as potentially mentally and physically damaging.
State health and education officials sent a letter Tuesday to the federal government saying such requirements contradict the state's sex education and AIDS education programs.
The state had accepted the $800,000 each year…
stcynic | October 29, 2006The New York Times reports that a group of 75 scientists at Case Western Reserve University in Ohio has endorsed the candidacy of Tom Sawyer in his race against creationist Deborah Owens Fink for a spot on the Ohio Board of Education. That group includes Lawrence Krauss and Patricia Princehouse. Amusingly, Owens Fink tries to give the idea that she's not really an advocate of ID creationism:
But Dr. Owens Fink, a professor of marketing at the University of Akron, said the curriculum standards she supported did not advocate teaching intelligent design, an ideological cousin of creationism.…
stcynic | October 28, 2006A church in Tennessee has officially started a boycott of Walmart because they sell stuff to negroes. I mean colored folk. I mean gay people.
grrlscientist | October 28, 2006This word is from the 29 October 2006 New York Times Magazine's feature, entitled "Islam and the Bomb" by Noah Feldman (print; not yet online). This week's issue is particularly good because, in addition to the article that I cite (below), it also contains a piece about the Taliban, several articles about bipolar disorder, an interview with a psychiatrist about depression and an piece about Alzheimer's disease.
Jurist (JOOR-ist) [French juriste from Medieval Latin jurista, from Latin jur- jus law]
n.
a legal scholar versed in civil law or the law of nations.
a public official…
stcynic | October 28, 2006I wrote a couple weeks ago about Sen. Sam Brownback holding up the nomination of a judge from West Michigan because she once attended a commitment ceremony for two lesbians. That judge, Janet Neff, has replied to Brownback's questions about the event but he still won't release the hold on her nomination.
"The ceremony, which was entirely private, took place in Massachusetts, where I had no authority to act in any official capacity and where, in any event, the ceremony had no legal effect," Neff wrote.
She said her family had lived next door to one of the women, Mary Curtin, for more than two…