The rhetoric is flying fast and furiously over the president’s promised and certainly pending veto of the newly expanded State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP). The SCHIP has actually been in existence since the majority Republican congress passed it in 1997 and for 10 years it has been providing health insurance for the children of [...]

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It is rather rare that one reads a first novel that is this good. Quite frankly its rare to read such a novel from an author of any experience. Taking inspiration from Shakespeare and Dante is not exactly a easy task. The fact Blixt is a Shakespearean actor probably helped on that fomer front but [...]

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The news from the latest Democratic debate is that most of the candidates admitted that they might not immediately pull troops from Iraq. When the left wing activists have been pressuring them to say the opposite, why would even someone like Obama who opposed the war in Iraq, hedge his bets? The first reason is [...]

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Alberta has always been an exciting place to live, in the 80’s when oil was selling at $15 a barrel, you could find an unemployed geologist on very street corner! And every last one of them was whining, of course trying to rationalize with these ‘rock heads’ got you nowhere, ‘The government is not being [...]

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Here are today’s updates for Days of Our Lives, As the World Turns and The Young and The Restless. Days Of Our Lives Abe puts a guard at Stefano’s hospital door and orders him to notify him if Steve shows up there. Bo said they just hope that Steve doesn’t get past the guard. Steve [...]

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Everyone knows about Google Earth able to spy on you when you sunbathe in the nude. But now commercial satellites are being used to confirm reports of human rights abuse in Burma such as forcing people to relocate from traditional villages to Military controlled areas. Scientific American reports: “If an attack was reported in a [...]

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This Friday’s Lunch features the weekly 10-in-3, including Hillary Stoppers, the Wyoming Hunter, debate absentees, and Fred Thompson’s amnesia. Also, it seems Kucinich prefers being right (or left?) to being tall. Watch now!

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Despite what many current and retired veterans charge is a transparent political attempt by the Bush administration to appease and pettifog on behalf of a failing Iraq governing authority in prosecuting its own soldiers for deaths that occur during the fog of battle. U.S. Army sniper Spec. Jorge G. Sandoval was acquitted of murder charges related to [...]

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The far-left is buzzing about the newly revealed transcripts of a secret meeting President Bush held with former Spanish Prime Minister Jose Aznar in 2003. They met at President Bush’s ranch in Crawford, TX to discuss the lead up to the Iraq war. The interesting thing to note is that the conversation between the two [...]

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eBay is responding to the latest (alleged) attack on their site by Vladuz by confirming that the account information was valid, however the credit card numbers were not. Here is what the Chatter (eBay’s blog team) has to say regarding their investigation: I’ve been in touch with our operations and security teams, and I have [...]

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From The Gathering Storm Blog The other night I watched the movie Exodus on TV and there was one scene in it that brought home the problem with moderate Muslims. Ari Ben Canaan, a Jew played by Paul Newman, was speaking to Taha, the mukhtar or his Arab village. Taha and Ari, who lived next [...]

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“The Kingdom brings redemption.”_ The Kingdom _ Title: The Kingdom The Kingdom brings redemption to what has been a mediocre, post summer theater experience. Relatively new director Peter Berg created a movie that is as hot and gritty as the Saudi Desert. This is not another over the top action flick trying to hide the [...]

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[As Tony Papa has pointed out elsewhere, those most likely to be imprisoned in NY on drug offenses are located in 7 targeted (mainly poor minority districts) in NYC.  Our prison population -- mainly minority -- reflects this manifest example of lingering racism in this country.  It is long past time for reform of our [...]

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The crisis in Burma (or Myanmar as renamed by the military junta) is getting worse by the hour. The military junta has cut off internet links to the outside world as amateur videos and pictures flooded the internet showing brutal repression by the military authorities since the crackdown started. What are the chances of military [...]

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Former Royal Dutch Shell Executive Paddy Briggs Business and Human Rights Introduction by John Donovan of RoyalDutchShellPlc.com Paddy Briggs, a former executive of Royal Dutch Shell who worked 37 years for the company before his retirement has written an important article stimulated by current events in Burma. It is focused on what he describes as [...]

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[The only positive thing I can say here is that when I started teaching few African Americans and fewer Latinos were in our colleges with the exception of those set aside for African Americans (an unwritten practice also was to distinguish between a regular college (e.g. University of Delaware) and a segregated one (e.g. Delaware [...]

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This AP report is a perfect example of how the western media hasn’t the temerity to call things like they are, a perfect example of how it soft-sells the truth for fear of violating those vaunted codes of politically correct conduct — and why we could lose this war with a radical Islam that isn’t [...]

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Are the producers and Barbra Walters over at TV’s The View already about to dump a new View Hostess over her controversial views? Rumors to that effect are beginning to leak out, anyway. While Rosie got well over a year to spout her anti-American, anti-Bush garbage before the folks at The View finally got motivated [...]

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The controversy surrounding Ahmadinejad's speech at Columbia is still roiling the campus and the legislature. Representative Duncan Hunter, a non-factor in the Presidential race, has threatened to cut all federal funding from Columbia for hosting the event. It's just not no-name presidential candidates hungry for airtime that are complaining. Conservative groups across the spectrum are [...]

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Women over here in Germany sure the hell are. Or one of them in Hamburg was. “Acting in a state of mental confusion” and high precision, a Chinese woman went on trial in Hamburg yesterday for ramming a 35 centimeter drill into the ear of her sleeping ex-husband. And then it gets weird. She denies [...]

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To my knowledge the argument that torture would be justified to halt a nuclear bomb explosion dates back to an old article by Michael Levin, member of the philosophy department at CCNY: http://people.brandeis.edu/~teuber/torture.html Such an argument borrows from the Aristotelian notion that on occasions we must depart from standard principles to do justice — Aristotle’s [...]

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[The extremist settlers (who for reasons I don't understand) have been located near Palestinian communities in the West Bank) are the most obviously abusive Israelis towards Palestinians.  Hopefully at some point along the way Israel will begin to police its own.  Such abusive treatment of Palestinians only perpetuates the tit for tat encounters between people [...]

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Foreign Born have that uniquely Los Angeles sound about them, relatively light rock with a tinge of the melodramatic, that marries to produce a very listenable sound. The band consists of Lewis Nicolas Pesacov (Guitars), Matt Popeluch (Vocals, Guitars), Garrett Ray (Drums), and Arial Rechtshaid (Bass). I do not know a great deal about Foreign [...]

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[One hopes that we will not see a repeat of Iraq with some sort of coalition of the unwilling engaging in a bombing mission directed at Iran.  We and Israel have both missed opportunities to engage with the Iranians in recent years.  Now is not the time to back off.  Let it be stressed that [...]

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What a difference a decade and a half makes. In 1983 Attrition had all of the musical ability of a Ham Sandwich! Esoteria (1999) is a whole different world, still very Goth, and still very dark, it has a much deeper musical feel to it. The industrial sound I found to be very similar to [...]

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Slashdot reports that internet use consumes 9.4% of US electricity and 5% of world Electrical output. according to research by David Sarokin at online pay-for-answers service Uclue. Worldwide, that’s 868 billion kilowatt-hours per year. The total includes the energy used by desktop computers and monitors (which makes up two-thirds of the total), plus other energy [...]

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