via Afro-Netizen

Moving past internal turmoil, SCLC announces new leader, vision
By Daniel Yee
The Associated Press

(AP) — ATLANTA — With oratory vigor and power reminiscent of co-founder Martin Luther King, Jr., the new president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference — the storied organization tied to some of the civil rights movement's greatest achievements — announced Friday the group will raise money and work against injustice around the world.

"The SCLC is moving forward," said Charles Steele Jr., the former Alabama state senator who left politics to help the SCLC and was appointed president on Friday of the organization that King helped found in 1957. "We've set together in a new direction, not only throughout this country but throughout the world."

Angela Winters, a moderate Conservative, in Absent Black Fathers:

Before I go on a negative rant about the absent black father, let me point out this article in The City Journal, by Kay Hymowitz about the positive trend in the traditional black family, almost an extinct species. It does have some encouraging signs and deserves more play.

Okay, pixie dust placed appropriately, she goes and says…

Anyone with half a brain can see the damage the destruction of the traditional black family is having on our children. Almost 70% of our children are growing up in homes without a father. The radical left would have you believe those men are absent because racism is keeping them from making a living that supports children and it's just too painful for them to look their kids in the face while 'the man' is preventing them from taking care of them. So they just stay away and suffer in silence.

Though I probably will later this week, dammit.

keto at The Colorblind Society caught the editorial I don't have to read in the Dallas Morning News, on the topic of splitting the Black vote between to Democratic and Republican parties. As usual with the folks who make this suggestion, the sole reason he gives for this allocation of votes to the Republican Party is, well, it's there.

keto responds with a deftness I could come to envy and closes with

One last point. People are looking at this problem in the wrong direction. Constituents should not chase candidates, candidates should chase constituents.

Stop telling blacks to chase parties that don't care enough about their votes to work for them. What is this, welfare for republicans?

Why aren't republicans running on issues that they know resonate with black people? Surely they know what these are?

When people don't vote for a candidate, I blame the candidate, and his or her party, not the voter. I don't blame evangelicals for not splitting their vote between dems and pubs, I blame dems for not appealing to this group well enough. It seems that black votes are so worthless, people think blacks have to hold a firesale on them and beg candidates to take them. If candidates really want these votes, they should work for them. That goes for both parties and applied to any group.

…though I wouldn't have added the anti-troll pixie dust that is the last sentence. If I were his editor I'd strike it and remove it from the word count he gets paid for. But I wouldn't touch another word.

Quote of note:

"Courts are not equipped to execute the law.

That's right. Killing the law is the Attorney General's job.

Anyway…

Ashcroft says judges threaten national security by questioning Bush decisions
The Associated Press

WASHINGTON - Federal judges are jeopardizing national security by issuing rulings contradictory to President Bush's decisions on America's obligations under international treaties and agreements, Attorney General John Ashcroft said Friday.

In his first remarks since his resignation was announced Tuesday, Ashcroft forcefully denounced what he called "a profoundly disturbing trend" among some judges to interfere in the president's constitutional authority to make decisions during war.

'The Truth About the Drug Companies' and 'Powerful Medicines': The Drug Lords
By STEPHEN S. HALL

DURING the past year, when I was driving my children to school, I'd hear the same advertisement on the radio again and again. You've probably heard it too: as somber music played in the background, a young man, his voice cracking, explains how he developed a rare and deadly form of cancer. He wonders if he will ever play baseball with his son, and then relates how, thanks to a company called Novartis and its new cancer treatment (never mentioned, but a drug called Gleevec), he's been given a new lease on life.

What is most fascinating about this ad is that it should seem necessary. As Marcia Angell points out in ''The Truth About the Drug Companies: How They Deceive Us and What to Do About It'': ''Truly good drugs don't have to be promoted. A genuinely important new drug, such as Gleevec, sells itself.'' So why advertise a cancer drug that cures a fatal leukemia and has no competition? The answer, of course, is that Novartis is not advertising Gleevec, but the company itself -- and the virtues of the drug industry as a whole. Why? Because, as Angell notes, a ''perfect storm'' of indignation -- on the part of consumers, regulators -- and even doctors -- may be developing around the pharmaceutical business.

Quote of note:

There is, however, a scientifically weaker study, pooling data from 12 clinical trials, that Dr. Furberg and Dr. Garret A. FitzGerald, a cardiologist and pharmacologist at the University of Pennsylvania, completed recently. "Basically, we showed that Bextra is no different than Vioxx, and Pfizer is trying to suppress that information,'' Dr. Furberg told The New York Times this week.

Dr. Furberg said yesterday that he was surprised to be removed from the advisory committee.

"I had a call yesterday, out of the blue," from the F.D.A., "disinviting me," he said. The agency, he said, told him "the reason is that I have publicly expressed my views."

I bring out this quote because there's a very similar case, and the FDA has recently made statements promising no such thing will ever happen again.

CNN is reporting Dick Cheney is having chest pains and is doing the secret location thing.

As much as I dislike the man, the thought of George Bush on his own is really scary.

I'm on the way out to see The Incredibles with my daughter. I've already seen it (don't ask).

Daughter: So why'd you see it already when we were supposed to hang out?

Me: Well, the guy came by and he had it…

Daughter: But we were supposed to hang out!

Me: Well, did anyone wait for me to see the last Harry Potter movie?

Daughter: bUt you didn't want to see it! You said you were only going because I wanted to see it in IMAX.

Me: That's right.

Daughter: That logic makes no sense.

Me: Well, it's a Republican country now. Get used to it.

It's appropriate for too many people too.

LATER: I guess I should have said "Not Work Safe." But hey, it's the weekend...

BRINGING HUMAN RIGHTS HOME:
STOPPING DOMESTIC VIOLENCE ONLINE CHAT

AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL USA and the MOVING IDEAS NETWORK
Tuesday, November 16, 2004 – all day starting at 10 AM

Ask a Question | Panelist Bios | Get Involved! | Learn More

Organizations around the world are gearing up for 16 Days of Activism Against Domestic Violence (November 25 – December 10), a worldwide campaign that provides an opportunity to take a stand against gender-based violence and to mobilize around women's human rights.

Secretary of Education Will Leave Bush Cabinet
By DIANA JEAN SCHEMO

WASHINGTON, Nov. 12 - After four years as education secretary, bringing President Bush's signature law on education to classrooms across the nation, Rod Paige plans to leave the cabinet in the near future, administration officials said Friday.

The unofficial announcement makes Dr. Paige, a son of segregation in Mississippi who rose to become the first black secretary of education, the third cabinet official who will not stay on for a second Bush term, following the resignations of Attorney General John Ashcroft and Commerce Secretary Donald L. Evans earlier this week.

Dr. Paige "has been looking at leaving, and has been talking with White House about the right time to do so," said an administration official who requested anonymity, since no official announcement had been made by either the White House or the Education Department. Separately, a second administration official confirmed the discussions.

Quote of note:

Vint Cerf, one of the fathers of the Internet and a Pentagon consultant on the war net, said he wondered if the military's dream was realistic. "I want to make sure what we realize is vision and not hallucination," Mr. Cerf said.

"This is sort of like Star Wars, where the policy was, 'Let's go out and build this system,' and technology lagged far behind,'' he said. "There's nothing wrong with having ambitious goals. You just need to temper them with physics and reality."

Pentagon Envisioning a Costly Internet for War
By TIM WEINER

Published: November 13, 2004

The Pentagon is building its own Internet, the military's world wide web for the wars of the future.

Man, Santorum deserves to lose his freedom to the new rulers of the world.

Over here topdog08 asked who Falwell would support for President. We may have a clue here.

Now, Santorum's under fire
Right-wing groups push him to take up fight against Specter
Friday, November 12, 2004

By Karen MacPherson, Post-Gazette National Bureau

WASHINGTON -- Conservative groups yesterday urged Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum to help lead the fight to deny the Senate judiciary committee chairmanship to his colleague, Sen. Arlen Specter.

The groups noted that they already were upset with Santorum, the No. 3 Republican in the Senate, for supporting Specter earlier this year in his Republican primary contest against Rep. Patrick Toomey, a conservative and strong opponent of abortion.

When someone says, "I'm a banker," or "I'm a teacher," I translate that to "I am a person whose job is 'banker'." This is not a trivial thing. It's a matter of identifying and identity.

That's why I never say I'm a Democrat. I'm (currently) a member of the Democratic Party.

This political crap we're dealing with, the bifurcation (this is a Progressive site, so I'm allowed to use big words) of the elites on both sides, sits on top of a population that uniformly

• does not want to see people starve
• does not want to see homelessness
• does not want to see anyone broken by catastrophic illness
• does not want a substandard education
• does not want to find themselves vulnerable to the above

Ultimately, if Republicans and Southern Christians (who I suspect are less of an issue than we are led to believe) choose to rein in there rather rabid leadership and vote for their own interests I will be perfectly satisfied. But since the major Republican virtue is obedience to the party line it's hard to expect help from that direction. And the Religious Right's leadership have an interesting advantage: when their flock is damaged by politicians following their leadership's dictates they can simple tell the flock they are being tested. And they are…but the test is to see if you understand life well enough to see through the false teachings of people who would be the ruler of the world (or almost as bad, the teaching of those who do not see through the false teachings).

via Real deal, a wonderful example of how suppression works.

Quote of note:

"I have a duty to be a good steward of our FCC license, and we go over the underwriting announcements with all of our sponsors," Rose said.

NC public radio station bars use of phrase 'reproductive rights'
The Associated Press

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. -- There's a big difference between reproductive rights and reproductive health, says the head of a group forced to substitute one word for the other in an underwriting announcement on a local radio station.

WUNC-FM recently informed Chapel Hill-based Ipas that use of the phrase "reproductive rights" in the group's on-air underwriting announcement could be interpreted as advocating a particular political position.

Before the election it was often asked, "Is it better for America to be liked or respected?"

No one asked the about the third option—neither liked nor respected.

In late October, the Financial Times had a front page story "Well-known US brands see sales in Europe fall."

Coca-Cola, McDonald's, Marlboro, and GM were all revealing problems echoing those "already faced by Disney, Wal-Mart and Gap."

Corporate chiefs dismissed the connection between falling sales and rising anti-Americanism.

"But the timing of the decline lends credence to warnings by a marketing and advertising group after the Abu Ghraib prison scandal that US brands could face trouble. 'My sense is we are seeing a transfer of anger and resentment from foreign polices to things American,' said Keith Reinhard, chairman of DDB Worldwide, an advertisting agency owned by Omnicon."

Remember, guys…Internet Explorer 1.0 code was Mosaic. Microsoft licensed that code base, but Mozilla is open source.

Microsoft has every damn byte of code every produced by the project. And you better believe improvements derived from the open source project are going to be woven as deeply into Microsoft's next generation browser as BSD code is in the NT kernel.

Anyway…

Microsoft says Firefox not a threat to IE
Published: November 11, 2004, 10:54 AM PST
By Munir Kotadia
Special to CNET News.com

Just days after the launch of open-source browser Firefox 1.0, Microsoft executives defended Internet Explorer, saying it is no less secure than any other browser and doesn't lack any important features.

Quote of note:

The phrase "in our bones" reveals a lot about the mental habits of the author. When you say you know something in your bones, you're saying that you don't need actual evidence to impute a vast criminal conspiracy to the other side. All you need to know is that the other side represents pure evil.

Paranoid Past the Fringe
Jonathan Chait

November 12, 2004

Are conservatives crazier than liberals? I think so. Just consider the behavior of both on one topic: election fraud.

You may have seen e-mails circulating among liberals charging that President Bush won the election through skulduggery. Like most conspiracy theories, these begin with indisputable facts — a voting machine in Ohio that erroneously awarded Bush 4,000 votes; the manufacturer of touch-screens pledging to help Bush; counties in Florida whose tallies for Bush vastly exceeded GOP registration — and then careen off into implausible conclusions.

Quote of note:

Why Arafat acted as he did during those 14 days will hover over any appraisal of his life. I was a member of the U.S. delegation at those talks and have never concealed my frustration with the Palestinians' attitude. Divided, they spent more time backstabbing each other than seeking a deal. Suspicious, they were quick to see potential loopholes and slow to recognize possible leads. Passive, they failed to put forward their own ideas, leaving it to others to present proposals they could then conveniently turn down. In all this, Arafat played his customary role — sitting back, standing still, staying mum.

Still, some reminders are in order.

Behind the Camp David Myth

I cut off the OpinionJournal daily emails. And my computer smells so much fresher…

More of This = Less of That

November 12, 2004

The fundamental defect of American politics is its inability to deal with the concept that more of something usually means less of something else. The winner in any election will probably be the candidate who promises most persuasively to suspend this basic law of nature, or at least to ignore it. But politicians are not solely to blame. In their daily lives, citizens are sharply aware that all economic choices have their costs. But when voting, they succumb to the fantasy of something for nothing.

President Bush has declared two big domestic policy ambitions for the start of his second term.

Confusion in White House on Aim of Iraq Election
From a Times Staff Writer

November 11, 2004

Stabilizing Iraq in time for parliamentary elections in January may be the driving force behind this week's military offensive in Fallouja, but there could be some confusion at the White House over just what Iraqis will be voting on.

"Well, I'm confident when people realize that there's a chance to vote on a president, they will participate," President Bush said Wednesday when asked whether the participation of Sunni Muslims would be necessary to make the elections free and fair.

Bush went on to draw a comparison with recent presidential elections in Afghanistan.

CIA critic of US war on terror resigns
Senior officer seeks to speak more freely
By Katherine Pfleger Shrader, Associated Press | November 12, 2004

WASHINGTON -- A senior CIA officer who has become an outspoken critic of the fight on terrorism turned in his resignation this week, citing a desire to speak more freely about problems in the hunt for Osama bin Laden and the debate over intelligence reform.

Current officials are rarely as vocal as Mike Scheuer, who wrote "Imperial Hubris: Why the West Is Losing the War on Terror." He called the decision to leave the CIA after 22 years "entirely my own."

"I have concluded that there has not been adequate national debate over the nature of the threat posed by Osama bin Laden and the forces he leads and inspires, and the nature and dimensions of intelligence reform needed to address that threat," Scheuer said in a statement sent to reporters yesterday via e-mail.

In hidden spots, a tenacious foe
By Anne Barnard, Globe Staff | November 12, 2004

FALLUJAH, Iraq -- Staff Sergeant Jason Laser's unit was letting loose with everything it had against a single rebel holed up in a house in the southern part of this city. Tanks were firing shells, and US soldiers were strafing the building with machine-gun fire to get at the insurgent.

"He shot an RPG [rocket-propelled grenade] down the stairs at us. We threw everything we had at this guy, and he was still coming at us," Laser recalled yesterday, a few hours after the clash. Finally, an Army bulldozer knocked the house down. But the fighter still managed to run away.

Quote of note:

Guerrilla snipers crouch in buildings and amid the rubble. Small squads of insurgents rush Marine positions. Dozens of rocket-propelled grenades, or RPGs, have struck tanks and other military vehicles. A pickup with six men carrying rocket-propelled grenade launchers was spotted near one mosque.

Several snipers on rooftops halted the advance of a platoon of Marines heading out on foot Wednesday to attack insurgents in a mosque where they had been firing on U.S. troops.

"They seem to be communicating with each other," said 1st Sgt. Jose Andrade of Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment, as he crouched on a main street, taking cover. "It makes it harder to get at them."

Fallouja Insurgency Chaotic, Persistent

Beyond Embattled City, Rebels Operate Freely
By Alissa J. Rubin and Tyler Marshall
Times Staff Writers

November 12, 2004

BAGHDAD — Iraqi insurgents have extended their reach over large swaths of the country, including sections of the capital, making it unlikely that the United States can establish the stability needed for credible elections in January even if its forces succeed in Fallouja, military and political analysts say.

There is little doubt that American-led forces will recapture Fallouja within days, the analysts say. But U.S. officials who are planning for the election face another challenge: a law and order vacuum in many Sunni Muslim areas where there are no American or Iraqi forces and insurgents can operate with impunity.

Check here if you don't get the reference in the title. It is not about Di Caprio.

Quote of note:

The Rev. Jerry Falwell, one of the nation's most prominent evangelists, is so concerned about harnessing the movement's power within the GOP and national politics that this week he formed the Faith and Values Coalition, which, as he put it, aimed to be a "21st century version of the Moral Majority."

The group will seek to register millions of additional evangelical voters, starting in January, to ensure that supporters of abortion rights, such as former New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, or backers of gay rights, such as Arizona Sen. John McCain, don't win the GOP presidential nomination and that Republicans retain the White House in 2008.

Link to Krauthammer, that is.

'Moral Values' Myth
By Charles Krauthammer
Friday, November 12, 2004; Page A25

In 1994, when the Gingrich revolution swept Republicans into power, ending 40 years of Democratic hegemony in the House, the mainstream press needed to account for this inversion of the Perfect Order of Things. A myth was born. Explained the USA Today headline: "ANGRY WHITE MEN: Their votes turn the tide for GOP."

Overnight, the revolution of the Angry White Male became conventional wisdom. In the 10 years before the 1994 election there were 56 mentions of angry white men in the media, according to LexisNexis. In the next seven months there were more than 1,400.

Maybe not…I hadn't gotten to testing the weblink functionality and your use of it exposed a problem or two, probably because it's not fully configured. And I really had no intention of weblinks submitted by users ever showing up on the front page of the site.

I'm going to put it back on the front page. But I've also disabled the creation of new links until I get a chance to work things out in the background.

(P6: Users: don't try this at home, which is to say I've disabled the ability for users to post web links because I can't stop them from being promoted to the front page. I live with the repercussions of my actions or inactions, so here ya go)

I have been doing research in ancient texts for 30 years, mostly classical and biblical Greek texts. While doing this research I have had the abortion issue in mind because of its current place in the news and election process. The key question I have been asking myself all this time is “when does a fetus/embryo/infant become a living soul”. Anti Abortionist who “love” the Bible seem to think it is at the point of conception, however, It seems from ancient text that the answer to that question was when the infant becomes self aware. Further inquiry led me to discover that psychologists today make that to be between 15 and 24 moths old. There is a cute little test to help determine it. It seems that in antiquity a child was considered to have a soul when he or she was able to think “I AM”. Interestingly that is also the name that the ancient Hebrews said that Moses heard God call him self on the sacred moutn. “RSV Exo 3:14 God said to Moses, "I Am Who I Am." And he said, "Say this to the people of Israel, `I Am has sent me to you.'"

Read this User Friendly cartoon and browse forward.

High Achievers Leaving Schools Behind
Transfers in Fairfax and Elsewhere Were Meant for Struggling Students

By Maria Glod
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, November 10, 2004; Page A01

Eight-year-old Umaid Qureshi does math problems for fun and reads most nights before bed. His mother thinks her son might become a doctor, like her. Or maybe he will follow his father's lead and become a software consultant.

So when Fairfax County sent Shafaq Qureshi a letter in August explaining that Umaid's school -- McNair Elementary in Herndon -- fell short on standardized test scores and that any McNair student could transfer to a better-performing school, she decided there was no reason for him to stay.

A Profession Thrown Into a Tailspin
By Amy Joyce
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, November 12, 2004; Page E01

In the days when United Airlines was flying high, Patrick Downey exulted in being paid to live his passion. When the former Navy pilot went to work for United in 1999, he felt he landed his dream job, one that would provide a comfortable salary to make a happy life in McLean with his wife and two daughters.

But in a round of cuts, Downey first took a 30 percent hit in his paycheck and then, last November, he was furloughed.

Today the 40-year-old pilot has a new life. He runs a small contracting firm with another pilot, building decks, refinishing basements and remodeling interiors.

jimi izrael tells you what you'll need in your emergency kit now that the Republicans have all three branches of government on a two year lockdown.

What It Iz: Your Republican Survival Kit
Stock up on everything you need to weather the next four years of Bush.
By jimi izrael

Well, I did say stranger things happen, but I would never have imagined that George W. Bush would get re-elected — let alone that the election would all come down to my state. I don’t know what to say — my best guess is that the Bush campaign had an underground initiative that worked hard courting the hobo vote. I found out last year doing an unrelated story, that an alarming number of bums are Republican. Still, it’s best not to point fingers.

Caught this loveliness via Cincinnati Black Blog. You can read the transcript excerpted below or watch the report (Windows Media format).

Racist Fliers In Taylor Mill

LAST UPDATE: 11/11/2004 1:28:03 PM

A flood of fliers with a racist message dumped in a quiet Tri-State town has police and residents baffled. Tuesday morning, a handful of the fliers were bundled and dropped in driveways near Taylor Mill Road in the middle of the night. The time of day has residents very concerned. Now, neighbors are trying to figure who did it and why. Local 12 Reporter Joe Webb talked with residents.

Suppose you knew every measurable trait a human could have. That would be a truly useful list to have. Suppose you took all those measurements and graphed them…each point on the horizontal arm would be one trait, and the height of bar atop a point would represent the measurement of that trait. Picture it:

Joe Blow as a series of discrete qualities. You’ve seen this sort of thing any number of times, though maybe not applied to humans.

Of course different ways of visualizing information brings different elements to the fore so you might want to consider other ways of visualizing those measurements. They can be stark points on a grid or you could connect adjacent data points as in the example below.

I just now realized the visitor counter at the bottom of the left hand column registers RSS downloads because they're generated by the same script as the pages you read.

Makes hella more sense than believing I got 233 visitors in the last 20 minutes.

Stirling Newberry is right

---

---

Europe Must Adapt to U.S. View on Terror, NATO Chief Says
By WARREN HOGE

UNITED NATIONS, Nov. 11 - The head of NATO said today that there was a critical "perception gap" between Europe and the United States on the subject of global terror and that Europeans must move closer to the American view of the seriousness of the threat.

"Your country focused very much on the fight against terror while in Europe we focused to a lesser extent on the consequences for the world," Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, NATO's secretary general, said in an interview. "We looked at it from different angles, and that for me is one of the reasons you saw such frictions in the trans-Atlantic relationship."

Is there a reason desktop RSS feed creation and management software should exist?

FeedForAll
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FeedForAll allows users to easily create, edit and publish RSS feeds.

RSS is the standard for content distribution and syndication. Create feeds to keep visitors informed.

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via Kuro5hin (which I still can't pronounce):

69 Years Later, Is It Happening Here?

By localroger
Sat Nov 6th, 2004 at 03:12:13 PM EST

Before 1984, before The Handmaid's Tale, before either the movie or the book by Stephen King, there was Sinclair Lewis' It Can't Happen Here.

Lewis' vision of an American descent into Fascism is as fresh and disturbing today as it was when it was written in 1935. Check out the full text online, and consider with me the continuing relevance of this 69 year old warning.

Frontline is broadcasting a 90 minute documentary called "The Persuaders," about advertising and marketing techniques and how they're being applied to politics.

There's a longish excerpt from the synopsis below the fold. Most importantly, it will be available online tomorrow. I don't know how long it will be available though.

Americans are swimming in a sea of messages.

Each year, legions of ad people, copywriters, market researchers, pollsters, consultants, and even linguists—most of whom work for one of six giant companies—spend billions of dollars and millions of man-hours trying to determine how to persuade consumers what to buy, whom to trust, and what to think. Increasingly, these techniques are migrating to the high-stakes arena of politics, shaping policy and influencing how Americans choose their leaders.

Dozens of Fallujah wounded arriving at U.S. military hospital in Germany
By Panos Kakaviatos, Associated Press, 11/11/2004 13:58

FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) Medical staff at a U.S. military hospital in southwest Germany are expanding bed capacity to care for scores of wounded from Iraq, including many from the assault on Fallujah, officials said Thursday.

A planeload with 53 wounded from Iraq arrived Thursday morning and another with 49 more was expected to arrive Thursday evening at the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center together making an anticipated 102 for the day, spokeswoman Marie Shaw said.

''We are very busy,'' Shaw said. ''We have seen an increase of patient arrivals since the outbreak of the Fallujah conflict.''

Quote of note:

The Pew poll found that voters' reasons for picking "moral values" varies. Just over four in 10 of those who picked "moral values" from the list mentioned social issues like gay marriage and abortion, but others talked about qualities like religion, helping the poor, and candidates' honesty and strength of leadership.

"We did not see any indication that social conservative issues like abortion, gay rights and stem cell research were anywhere near as important as the economy and Iraq," said Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center. "'Moral values' is a phrase that's very attractive to people."

Survey: Format influenced voter priorities

I suggest a compromise.

Georgia schools should teach intelligent design along with evolution if Georgia Sunday Schools teach evolution along with intelligent design.

Ga. evolution dispute embarrasses some
By Kristen Wyatt, Associated Press Writer | November 11, 2004

ATLANTA --First, Georgia's education chief tried to take the word "evolution" out of the state's science curriculum. Now a suburban Atlanta county is in federal court over textbook stickers that call evolution "a theory, not a fact." Some here worry that Georgia is making itself look like a bunch of rubes or, worse, discrediting its own students.

"People want to project the image that Georgia is a modern state, that we're in the 21st century. Then something like this happens," said Emory University molecular biologist Carlos Moreno.

Sagefox, one of the newer members 'round these parts, told me by email about a rather sneaky identity theft maneuver.

Camera phones.

If someone sneaks a shot of your credit card while you're buying something, they have your name, card number and expiration date…and from there, just about anything reasonable that fits in your credit limit.

Infighting puts SCLC on verge of collapse
By CAMERON McWHIRTER
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 11/10/04

The Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth on Wednesday announced his resignation as president of the Atlanta-based Southern Christian Leadership Conference in what could be a fatal blow to the once-venerable civil rights organization.

"For years, deceit, mistrust and a lack of spiritual discipline and truth have eaten away at the core of this once-hallowed organization," Shuttlesworth wrote in a two-page statement giving his reasons for quitting.

Shuttlesworth's departure is the latest in a recent string of crises hitting the troubled civil rights organization, from the previous president's resignation in 2003 to a chaotic convention this summer in which police had to be called to keep peace.

Army Gives Family 'No Answers' in Suicide
By Theola S. Labbe
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, November 11, 2004; Page A01

KATY, Tex. -- Carol Coons keeps her son's dog tags and framed photo in the living room, on the same shelf as the dried roses from his memorial service.

She keeps her file folder in a kitchen drawer. "I call this my investigation folder," she said, pulling it out, dog-eared and thick with research, scribbled names and notes from her many phone calls to Washington officials. "We just had all these questions, and they had no answers."

On June 21, 2003, the Army evacuated Master Sgt. James Curtis Coons, 36, from Kuwait after he overdosed on sleeping pills. He told doctors he was seeing the shattered face of a dead soldier in the mirror. They diagnosed him with post-traumatic stress disorder, sent him to a hospital in Germany and then to their premier treatment facility, Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Northwest Washington. By July 4 he was dead, hanging from a bedsheet in his room at Mologne House, a hotel for outpatients and families on the grounds of Walter Reed.

Our Collateral Damage
By Richard Cohen
Thursday, November 11, 2004; Page A37

If you watch HBO's "Last Letters Home" -- and you should -- keep an eye on a particular father of a slain soldier and listen hard. The other parents, wives, girlfriends, boyfriends, friends and siblings are occasionally eloquent, always moving and always sad, but this one father is starkly different. He says nothing. His wife talks; he doesn't. The war in Iraq has taken his son and that, really, is all there is to say. Thousands of miles from Iraq, this father is what we call collateral damage.

I was reminded of "Johnny Got His Gun," Dalton Trumbo's 1939 novel about a World War I soldier who comes back horribly disfigured and mute. In the father's case, though, the muteness is unrelated to physical injury. Nothing was done to the body, but his silence testifies to a searing pain -- contained, bottled up, metastasizing, none of it leaking out, none of it shared -- a man, coping (not coping?) with the death of his best friend, his silliest dreams, his best memories, his life beyond the one granted him. His silence will break your heart.

No Vote Necessary
Redistricting is creating a U.S. House of Lords.
By David S. Broder

Thursday, November 11, 2004; Page A37

John Mica has pulled off a feat many of us would have thought impossible. He has been elected to Congress without ever having his name on the ballot this year. His story says a lot about what has happened to the House of Representatives, the part of the federal government designed to be closest to the people, but one that has become more like an American House of Lords.

I heard about Mica from Russ Freeburg, a retired Chicago Tribune political reporter who now lives in Mica's Florida district. When Freeburg and his wife went to vote, he noticed something missing. His e-mail tells the story:

Republicans don't even reach out internally, so I don't know WHAT makes you think they'll "reach out" to you.

Quote of note:

"I would be shocked if conservatives don't extract a pound of flesh from Senator Specter," said Richard A. Viguerie, the Republican consultant, who is circulating strategy memos on the issue. He added, "Republicans have long memories. We'll never forget what he did to Judge Bork."

Bork Hearings Resurface as Impediment to Specter
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG

WASHINGTON, Nov. 10 - Many liberal women have never forgiven Senator Arlen Specter for his pointed questioning of Prof. Anita F. Hill, whose accusations of sexual harassment against Judge Clarence Thomas, then a Supreme Court nominee, riveted the nation. But conservatives have never forgiven him for crossing party lines to defeat another Supreme Court nominee, Judge Robert H. Bork.

Checks stolen from Dem. campaign committee
By Alan Fram, Associated Press Writer | November 11, 2004

WASHINGTON --The FBI and U.S. attorney's office are investigating the apparent theft of about $350,000 in checks from a Democratic campaign committee, federal law enforcement and Democratic Party officials said Thursday.

The money was traced to a private bank account that bank records indicate was opened by Roger Chiang, who was employed by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

All but about $10,000 has been recovered, they said. Chiang, who was involved in fund raising, has been fired, the Democratic official said. No charges have been filed.

Quote of note:

At Fort Carson in Colorado, a black granite memorial honors 49 fallen members of the Third Armored Cavalry Regiment, bearing the inscription: ''Brave Rifles! Veterans! You have been baptized in fire and blood, and have come out steel."

Town's loss can't bridge division on war
By Sarah Schweitzer, Globe Staff | November 11, 2004

BRATTLEBORO, Vt. -- When Kyle Gilbert's body was returned home from Iraq, Brattleboro mourned its native son with a stunning funeral procession.

Thousands lined Main Street and crowded the town green on a summer evening last year to honor the fallen soldier, the first from Windham County and one of 13 so far from Vermont, which has one of the nation's highest rates of Iraq casualties. The outpouring, the town manager said, was like nothing he'd seen since the death of John F. Kennedy.

Quote of note:

Bush said his commission, headed by Senator Patrick Moynihan of New York, a Democrat who died in 2003, provided ''a good blueprint." The commission had been asked to come up with a plan for establishing personal investment accounts.

Bush again eyes Social Security overhaul
By Leigh Strope, Associated Press | November 11, 2004

WASHINGTON -- Fresh off reelection, President Bush is dusting off an ambitious plan to overhaul Social Security, a controversial proposal that had been shelved because of politics and the administration's focus on tax cuts and terrorism.

Unless you're dead too, you ain't shared shit.

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Bosnian Serbs issue apology for massacre
By Associated Press | November 11, 2004

BANJA LUKA, Bosnia-Herzegovina -- The Bosnian Serb government issued an apology yesterday for the 1995 massacre of 7,800 Muslim civilians in Srebrenica, saying it ''shares the pain" of the victims' families.

The apology came after the government reviewed a Bosnian Serb commission's final report on the worst massacre of civilians in Europe since World War II. The government session was last month, but the conclusions were not made public until yesterday.

''The report makes it clear that enormous crimes were committed in the area of Srebrenica in July 1995," the Bosnian Serb government said.

This is late, but I need to point folks to No Exit in Black: Trapped by thr Economy and Politics by Marcellus Andrews in last week's Black Commentator.

Marcellus Andrews is an economist and senior research fellow at the New America Foundation. Dr. Andrews writes on economic policy and economic justice for academic and popular audiences, including The Political Economy of Hope and Fear: Capitalism and the Black Condition in America (1999, NYU Press) and Taking Back Capitalism: A Capitalist Road to Economic Justice (forthcoming, NYU Press). Dr. Andrews received a PhD in economics from Yale University and has taught economics at Wellesley College as well as the City University of New York.

Avery is cool…

Nicklin' and Dimin'
I don't see nothin' wrong with a little bump and grind but comes a time when you gotta come off that booty (c) Common

In some post-Brainiac discussion, a friend of mine asked me the following question: Why is everything a means to an end? Why does everything have to get you some booty?

I remember a different friend asked me the same question a long time ago, when I was first starting to think about the classes I would take as a first-semester freshman in college. Back then the question was specifically directed to me, whereas this time it's rhetorical. But it's something worth thinking about seriously.

The quick and easy answer, and perhaps ultimately, the most correct answer would be that we live in a fallen world where sin prevails. But I'ma hold off on talkin at that frequency for a minute. Before I get to the deep structure, I wanna look at what's above the ground.

Quote of note:

The “ownership society” that Bush touts looks like a debtor’s society for many Black families, Shapiro said. There have been record levels of foreclosures, car repossessions and predatory lending.

According to 2003 federal government data, 1.6 million households filed for bankruptcy in 2003, up 33 percent from 2000. Shapiro said it is harder today for young families with children to get down payments for houses, however white, first-time homeowners usually do much better than Blacks. That’s because they are more likely to be able to get help from their parents, grandparents or other family members.

For every $1 of white wealth, Blacks have 10 cents of wealth. Middle-class Black households have just 25 cents of wealth compared to $1 for whites, Shapiro said.

Quotes of note:

Mr. Finkelstein told Mr. Gaon that he was troubled by the strategy of dividing the country by "values of religion and culture."

"Bush courted the evangelical vote," he said, "and turned these elections, in fact, into a referendum on the religious and cultural nature of America. This is my problem."

"Bush's victory strengthens the ability of the Christian right to nominate the next Republican nominee as much as the last one," Mr. Finkelstein said.

I won't bother with the Hillary nonsense at the end of the article.

Anyway…

G.O.P. Adviser Says Bush's Evangelical Strategy Split Country

'Groundhog Day' in Iraq
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

I got a brief glimpse of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's news conference on Monday, as the battle for Falluja began. I couldn't help but rub my eyes for a moment and wonder aloud whether I had been transported back in time to some 20 months ago, when the war for Iraq had just started. Watching CNN, I saw the same Rummy joking with the Pentagon press corps, the same scratchy reports from the front by "embedded reporters,'' the same footage of U.S. generals who briefed the soldiers preparing for battle about how they were liberating Iraq.

There was only one difference that no one seemed to want to mention. It wasn't 20 months ago. It was now. And Iraq has still not been fully liberated. In fact, as the fight for Falluja shows, it hasn't even been fully occupied.

After John Ashcroft

Having just emerged from a campaign season in which President Bush constantly reminded the public that he was a war president in the never-ending fight against terrorism, it felt a little peculiar to hear John Ashcroft resign as attorney general with the announcement that "the objective of securing the safety of Americans from crime and terror has been achieved." Mr. Ashcroft, however, is yesterday's news. Now that he's leaving, we hope that Mr. Bush will take the opportunity to put the Justice Department back in the business of enforcing the laws evenhandedly and upholding Americans' constitutional rights.

VI really sucks. But I need to use it to set up cron jobs...

Arab Response to Attacks Reveals Mixed Allegiances
By NEIL MacFARQUHAR

CAIRO, Thursday, Nov. 11 - When an Islamist member of the Parliament in Bahrain on Tuesday proposed condemning the United States-led assault against Falluja, one of his 39 colleagues angrily rejected the idea as supporting "terrorists" in Iraq, and a heated debate ensued. In the end, a compromise was reached: a statement censuring the death of innocent civilians.

The incident epitomizes the deep ambivalence in the Arab world about the assault against Falluja, the stronghold of the Iraqi insurgency.

"People have mixed feelings," said Sawsan Shair, a Bahraini columnist and political analyst. Few Arabs support the occupation, but most also dislike rooting for people they see as thugs beholden to Saddam Hussein and wild-eyed mujahedeen from around the world.

Quote of note:

The documents, however, do not clarify the central questions about the imports: why the Americans went along with such high costs and which parties to the transactions may have benefited most.

Halliburton May Have Been Pressured by U.S. Diplomats to Disregard High Fuel Prices
By ERIK ECKHOLM

American diplomats pressured the Halliburton Company in late 2003 to keep using a Kuwaiti subcontractor to truck fuel into Iraq, despite evidence that the company was charging exorbitant prices, newly released State Department documents show.

The documents - a handful of e-mail messages and memorandums to and from American diplomats - raise yet more questions about the post-invasion fuel imports to Iraq, which are already the subject of federal inquiries into possible overbilling and fraud.

Ex-C.I.A. Chief Nets $500,000 on Talk Circuit
By DOUGLAS JEHL

WASHINGTON, Nov. 10 - George J. Tenet has kept a low public profile since he stepped down as the country's intelligence chief in July. But it turns out that he has had a lot to say.

In the past few months, Mr. Tenet has earned well over $500,000 in speaking fees from about 20 appearances, associates said. He is negotiating for a lucrative book contract. But when he speaks to large groups, he does so only under ground rules intended to keep his remarks off the record.

In doing so, Mr. Tenet has tried to tread a delicate line, defending beleaguered intelligence agencies and his own performance while steering clear of a more overt debate. In particular, Mr. Tenet has repeatedly sidestepped questions about the wisdom of the war in Iraq, people who have attended the closed sessions said.

That Alan Keyes thread I started a Blogcritics has taken an interesting turn with a little impromptu assistance from Mac Diva.

In particular comments 12, 49, 60 and 63 inspired this little experiment. It ought to make tomorrow quite the interesting day.

Report Card
November 10, 2004
Still Ambivalent After All These Years
Part one of a series evaluating the media's performance during the 2004 campaign.

By Thomas Lang

In a perfect world, the press would facilitate the spread of fact and block the proliferation of falsehoods. Alas, the American political system is plagued by a political media obsessed with strategy, attracted to the trivial, essentially too distracted to bother with the mundane details of fact and fiction. This year was no exception.

From day one, the campaign press showed a maddening unwillingness to brush up on the basic facts most important to Americans. Instead of bookmarking the slightly intimidating Bureau of Labor Statistics webpage, reporters hung on to and transcribed verbatim many of the loaded partisan talking points delivered by the candidates via email.

Hat tip to the magpie at Pacific Views

Buyers defend deductions, saying they help create jobs
By ERIC NALDER
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER INVESTIGATIVE REPORTER

When Layne Sapp takes delivery of a yacht four times the size of an average American home next month, he will be acquiring a multimillion-dollar tax break.

Yacht brokers on both coasts have lately been promoting the tax break he's using, a temporary deal provided by the Bush administration and Congress through a law passed in 2003.

Sapp said he'll first qualify the 130-foot yacht named Infinity as a business expense. Then he will depreciate the $15 million yacht by half its value -- $7.5 million -- immediately. Then he'll use the depreciation as a loss on his personal income and save about $3 million in income taxes, a rough estimate based on the fact he is in the top tax bracket.

Most of you religious folks are being excluded by the leaders of the Religious Right. You too are on the wrong side of things as far as they are concerned.

Anyway…

Moderates, Liberals Hear Call to Morality Debate
Some Christians say conservatives should focus on issues such as poverty -- not just gay marriage and abortion.
By Larry B. Stammer
Times Staff Writer

November 10, 2004

…"The mainline Protestants, who are now the sideline Protestants, and the secularists like John Kerry were the dominant force in 1960s America," Richard Land, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, said last week. "Their day is over. Ours has arrived."[P6: emphasis added]

Quote of note:

Interviews with black voters revealed a desire for protection tempered by negative experiences with law enforcement.

Outside the Miracle Market at Wilmington Avenue and Alondra Boulevard in Compton, Edward Lindsey said the police didn't deserve the extra tax money because they hadn't learned to respect residents.

Lindsey said he would have voted for the measure if police "were doing what they should do instead of messing with everybody."

A few weeks ago, the former GM plant worker said, he was pulled over by police who told him he looked like a suspected gang member. "How the hell can I look like a gangbanger?" Lindsey said. "I'm 74 years old. I'm retired!"

...Political scientist Raphael Sonenshein, who has written extensively about race and politics in Los Angeles, said the lack of enthusiasm for the measure among African Americans was notable.

"For black residents, it doesn't matter if you make it in life; you can [still] get stopped by police," he said. The impact of such stops "has been tremendous on blacks, and that has generated a lot of that ambivalence."

"An agenda that argues exclusively for more cops is not likely to get the response of something that calls for more prevention and more reform," he added. "I think the electorate would respond more favorably to a more holistic look at crime."

There'll be a lot of discussion about how to relate to Christian Conservatives for a while yet. Thing is, there's been a lot of discussion about if for a while and not every progressive has, like, failed entirely to get through.

This effort is several years old and is therefore filled with a lot of "can't we all just get along" hooey, but has some good information too. It's presented by a professional mediating group called BridgeBuilders…maybe Bush can hire them.

It's Not Just About Bible Reading And Prayer Anymore...

We're all familiar with the advice not to discuss politics or religion with our friends, much less talk about politics and religion in a community of strangers. But many districts are discovering that they cannot ignore religious issues and hope to provide a fair educational environment.

The 1963 Supreme Court decision outlawing state-sponsored school prayer and Bible reading in public schools fundamentally changed how our society deals with religious issues. It ended the almost 200 years of governmental preference for Protestant Christianity and by doing so ushered in an era of increasing tension between religious conservatives and public education. In the ensuing years further court cases, the association of the education establishment with many liberal social causes and many misapplications of the doctrine of the separation of church and state have caused numerous conflicts.

More recently falling test scores, controversial reform initiatives and the campaign for school choice have extended the concerns of the religious community far beyond prayer and Bible reading to virtually every area of school curriculum and policy. The chart below shows the four basic concerns many religious parents have with public education and the practical impact they can have on various segments of school life.

1. Fear of Indoctrination	a. in liberal politics b. in alternative religions c. in an anti-religious world order
2. Fear of losing control of their child's future	a. technology b. psychological comments
3. Fear of alienating children from religious faith	a. schools as 'religion free' zones b. creation vs. evolution
4. Fear the 'dumbing down' of curriculum	a. innovation over basics b. educational fads and jargons c. resent unmotivated/undisciplined students

Quote of note:

On the federal level, several members of Congress complained last year after the NCI website included material suggesting a link between breast cancer and abortion or miscarriage. An expert panel that was asked to review the data reported in March 2003 that "well-established" evidence shows no link.

Questions on states' abortion warnings
Unproven link to cancer cited
By Laura Meckler, Associated Press | November 10, 2004

WASHINGTON -- In several states, women considering abortion are given government-issued brochures warning that the procedure could increase their chance of developing breast cancer, despite scientific findings to the contrary.

Liza at culturekitchen found a rant of olympian stature. Doesn't seem to be a blog. Doesn't need to be.

Cause we fucking founded this country, assholes. Those Founding Fathers you keep going on and on about? All that bullshit about what you think they meant by the Second Amendment giving you the right to keep your assault weapons in the glove compartment because you didn't bother to read the first half of the fucking sentence? Who do you think those wig-wearing lacy-shirt sporting revolutionaries were? They were fucking blue-staters, dickhead. Boston? Philadelphia? New York? Hello? Think there might be a reason all the fucking monuments are up here in our backyard?

<set mode="Chaos Lord">
I'm not. It's your organizations and leaders that bother me.

Two questions. And keep your answers to yourself (or not…)

Who does your Bible say is the ruler of the world?

When the Religious Right finishes reshaping the USofA and, through it, the world, who will be the ruler of the world?

Think long, think wrong.
<set mode="mortal">

Evolution tags aimed to spur religious talk[Registration required]
By KRISTINA TORRES
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 11/09/04

Cobb County school board members said Tuesday that when they put disclaimers about evolution in science textbooks, they knew religious ideas of man's origin would be brought up in class.

However, board members said they just wanted students to feel comfortable voicing their own beliefs. Teachers were still to teach evolution, they said.

"You needed a sort of balance" for discussion, Betty Gray testified in the second day of arguments in a trial over whether the disclaimers should be removed. Gray described her own beliefs about evolution as "faith-based," and said the board intended for students to feel "an openness to bring up what they needed to."

Gunmen Kidnap Three Members of Allawi's Family
U.S. Controls 70 Percent of Fallujah, Military Says
By Karl Vick, Jackie Spinner and Fred Barbash
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, November 11, 2004; 8:36 AM

BAGHDAD, Nov. 10 -- Gunmen kidnapped a first cousin of interim Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi and two other members of his extended family from their Baghdad home on Tuesday, an Allawi spokesman said Wednesday morning. A militant Islamist group said Wednesday it would execute Allawi's relatives unless U.S. and Iraqi forces withdraw from Fallujah.

In Fallujah, meanwhile, the U.S. military claimed control of 70 percent of the rebellious city as fighting entered its third full day. Resistance was reported heavy in places and non-existent in others.

<set mode="Chaos Lord">
I just had a minor epiphany. The Washington Post ran an article about the prospective "hydrogen economy." It led with the first hydrogen pump installed at a filling station (at a cost of two million dollars, to service six minivans). When I read this:

"The major unanswered questions about hydrogen are not whether you can run a car on it. They are, how do you make it? What is it going to cost? And what is going to be the public investment in infrastructure?" said David Hamilton, director of global warming and energy programs at the Sierra Club.

and this:

Hydrogen is a common element, but it has to be extracted from other sources in ways that can be environmentally damaging. The most common method for producing hydrogen involves burning natural gas, but with natural gas already in increasing demand and short supply, it's not practical to expect it to be a major source for powering vehicles, Hamilton said.

That leads to the next most common way to produce hydrogen: a method that involves burning coal. But that produces vast amounts of carbon dioxide, a "greenhouse gas" that's thought to contribute to global climate change.

Even if companies such as Shell develop cleaner sources for hydrogen -- such as burning methanol or vegetable matter -- there remain huge hurdles in transporting and storing the fuel, and in building a distribution network as far-reaching as today's system of corner gas stations.

I tried to grasp the economic scope of converting the economy, even pretending you could handle hydrogen the same way as oil. Duplicating the whole pumping/pipeline/trucking scheme, not as something that accrued the way the current system has but constructing it so that it can be used. It's like getting a circulatory system transplant.

And it's pure expense, no income. Who's going to pay for that?

There's a deep absurdity to all this. A deep and possibly subtle misalignment of the concepts "possible," "probable" and "capable."
<set mode="mortal">

Quote of note:

The NAFTA report concluded that the modified corn does not pose a health risk, but it did say that the environmental consequences are less well understood. It also raised the possibility of the spread of potentially more hazardous types of modified corn -- such as varieties grown in the United States to produce pharmaceuticals and industrial products.

"If those types of corn ever made it to Mexico and got planted, then yes, there would be a health and safety problem that would be very hard to solve," Ellstrand said.

U.S. Genetically Modified Corn Is Assailed
NAFTA Report Calls Grain a Threat to Mexico; Administration Disputes Study

By Marc Kaufman

This is good. This is very good.

Read editorial, go to the Washington Post and look at all the ads and everything.

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The Politics of Self-Esteem
By Robert J. Samuelson
Wednesday, November 10, 2004; Page A27

Pledges to work for more unity or "less polarization" are a standard post-election ritual. We've heard them from George Bush and John Kerry. They're hard to take seriously. Our age practices what I call "the politics of self-esteem." Political elites of all stripes (elected officials, activists, commentators) try to make their most fervent followers feel better by belittling the other side. By this, I don't mean that there aren't real differences over issues or that elections don't alter some government policies. What I mean is that, under the cover of these familiar conflicts, politicians and opinion leaders are really engaged in a contest to raise the spirits and affirm the beliefs of their supporters. This is what many Americans now want. They desire elevated self-esteem.

Help America Vote
Wednesday, November 10, 2004; Page A26

AFTER THE 2000 election debacle, Congress took steps to improve the voting system, but it acted slowly, stingily and sloppily. Of the $4 billion for new voting technology authorized by the Help America Vote Act of 2002, Congress provided only $1.5 billion, and much of that came late. While the law required that voters who for some reason aren't on the rolls be permitted to cast provisional ballots, it didn't specify how such ballots should be handled. That turned out not to be an issue this year only because President Bush won by a comfortable enough margin to make the provisional ballots irrelevant.

One set of problems last week had to do with the mechanics of voting. The wait to vote was unacceptably long in some places. If more machines are needed, states must invest in them, and the federal government needs to do its part to fulfill the promise of the new law. While we retain a sentimental attachment to the notion of a single election day, more states should move to early voting, as 35 states already have. In particular, opening polling places the weekend before Election Day makes sense.

Democrats Vow to Hold Bush Accountable
By Charles Babington and Dan Balz
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, November 10, 2004; Page A07

Congressional Democrats returned to Washington in a defiant mood yesterday, making no apologies for the campaign in which they lost congressional seats and the presidential race and vowing to hold President Bush accountable for his handling of the deficit, the Iraq war and other issues.

In his first public comments since conceding defeat to Bush, Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) did not rule out a bid in 2008 and promised to keep pushing the issues he championed this year.

"Let me tell you one thing that I want to make clear," Kerry said in a brief meeting with reporters in the Capitol.

For Dominican Ambassador, the True Challenge Is Being Heard
By Nora Boustany
Wednesday, November 10, 2004; Page A24

The ambassador for the Dominican Republic, Hugo Guiliani Cury, says one of his great challenges in representing a small country at peace has been attracting the attention of officials and policymakers in Washington. Cury, who has been ambassador here since 2002, is an economist and former minister of trade and industry. He is preparing to return home to Santo Domingo, the Dominican capital.

"Being a small country, playing a role is not an easy thing," Cury said in an interview Monday at his Georgian-style residence facing Rock Creek Park. He said he has been focusing on trade negotiations, in particular talks to include the Dominican Republic in the Central American Free Trade Agreement.

Man Charged With Aiding Terrorists
Wyo. College Student Reported Roommate

By John Mintz
Washington Post Staff Writer

Wednesday, November 10, 2004; Page A03

A Wyoming college student has been charged with providing material support to a terrorist group after acknowledging to federal agents in Texas that he was trying to send military equipment to a Somali group that the U.S. government has designated as a terrorist organization, officials said yesterday.

The student, Mark Robert Walker, 18, also told agents that he was trying to arrange travel to Somalia to fight alongside the al-Ittihad al-Islamiya group, which the U.S. government said is allied with al Qaeda, according to a document filed in federal court in El Paso.

Largest Union Issues Call for Major Changes
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE

As the nation's union leaders gather today in Washington the labor movement is in turmoil, with the president of the A.F.L.-C.I.O.'s largest union hinting that it might pull out of the labor federation and some labor leaders saying that John J. Sweeney may face a challenge for its presidency.

In a sign of the jockeying and soul-searching, Andrew L. Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union, the A.F.L.-C.I.O.'s largest union, called yesterday in a letter for far-reaching changes in labor designed to increase its membership, proposing a $25-million-a-year campaign to unionize Wal-Mart and a near doubling in the amount spent annually on organizing.

Can Janet Jackson be far behind?

Ashcroft Quits Top Justice Post; Evans Going, Too

By ELISABETH BUMILLER

WASHINGTON, Nov. 9 - Attorney General John Ashcroft, one of the most high-profile and polarizing members of the Bush cabinet, said Tuesday that he would resign, after a tumultuous tenure in which he was praised for his aggressive fight against terrorists but assailed by critics who said he sacrificed civil liberties in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Commerce Secretary Donald L. Evans, a close friend of President Bush who spent years promoting the administration's tax cuts across the country, also submitted a letter of resignation on Tuesday.

The two were the first in a series of departures from the administration that are expected before Mr. Bush is inaugurated in January for a second term.

Mentioned as possible candidates to replace Mr. Ashcroft are Larry Thompson, who served as deputy attorney general until last year, Marc Racicot, who was chairman of Mr. Bush's re-election campaign, and Alberto R. Gonzales, the White House counsel.

Cast Away
by Rick Perlstein
It's the Wealth, Stupid
Right-wing class warfare swung the 2004 election
November 9th, 2004 12:35 PM

…The idea that last week's election results show that there is a great silent majority of Americans who vote first and foremost on their moral values, which means that they vote for the Republicans, has become gospel on our nation's airwaves by now. It is nonsense on stilts. Bush didn't win this election on "moral values." It turns out he didn't do any better among strong churchgoers, or rural voters, than he did in 2000. What was it that actually put him over the top? It's the wealth, stupid.

Pundits blow hot air. Political scientists crunch numbers. On his blog Polysigh, my favorite political scientist, Phil Klinkner, ran a simple exercise. Multiplying the turnout among a certain group by the percent who went for Bush yields a number electoral statisticians call "performance." Among heavy churchgoers, Bush's performance last time was 25 percent (turnout, 42 percent; percentage of vote, 59 percent). This time out it was also 25 percent—no change. Slightly lower turnout (41 percent), slightly higher rate of vote (61 percent).

Nation's Poor Win Election For Nation's Rich

WASHINGTON, DC—The economically disadvantaged segment of the U.S. population provided the decisive factor in another presidential election last Tuesday, handing control of the government to the rich and powerful once again.

"The Republican party—the party of industrial mega-capitalists, corporate financiers, power brokers, and the moneyed elite—would like to thank the undereducated rural poor, the struggling blue-collar workers in Middle America, and the God-fearing underpriviledged minorities who voted George W. Bush back into office," Karl Rove, senior advisor to Bush, told reporters at a press conference Monday. "You have selflessly sacrificed your well-being and voted against your own economic interest. For this, we humbly thank you."

Bush Promises To Unite Nation For Real This Time
WASHINGTON, DC—A week after winning a narrow victory over Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry, President Bush promised to "unite the divided nation, but for real this time." "Just as I pledged in 2000, I promise to bring the two halves of this nation together—only this time I'm really gonna do it," Bush said Tuesday. "I'll work hard to put an end to partisan politics. Seriously, though. This term, I will." Bush then requested the support of all Americans for his agenda of cutting taxes and extending America's presence in Iraq.

The Democratic post election discussion about tactics and positioning and reaching out toward the middle is still going on. I am failing to work up a plot line to deliver this idea with so just out with it.

There are things every human needs to stay alive. No one really wants to see people without them. The USofA is wealthy and powerful enough to insure every citizen has those things. That should be the base benefit of being a citizen of the nation.

There are those things we all agree we want. Since we all want them we should design to make them available uniformly.

A government should act affirmatively to see that no one is denied access, no one has unfair access, and to enhance everyone's access to the degree possible to these things.

You need to accurately delivery the progressive world view on the back of a post card. You need to do it so that it represents progressive intent, and it must be clear that one would benefit if it were the general guiding principle. And it must be memorable (or at least rememberable).

Slowdown Forces Many to Wander for Work
IT Unemployment Now Exceeds Overall Jobless Rate

By Greg Schneider
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, November 9, 2004; Page A01

YORK, Pa. -- David Packman knocks on the motel room door and his wife lets him in. His 9-year-old son is waiting with sneakers on, hoping for a trip outside after a day of sitting around. Packman's other son, 4, dances gleefully around the room. Dad's home from work.

This is no holiday getaway; this motel room, for the moment, is where the family lives. Packman, 34, is one month into a four-month contract fixing computers at a local company, and one day closer to the end of the line. It's Monday, and the $50 in Packman's pocket will have to cover food, laundry and incidentals for the coming week.

The overall figure spent on national security secret was never so important as to be a stumbling block. You'd think knowing we spend more on weaponry than most nations' national economy would be something of a deterrent.

Concession Breaks Impasse on Bill to Create Spy Post
By PHILIP SHENON

WASHINGTON, Nov. 8 - Congressional negotiators reported progress on Monday in long-stalled talks over a bill to enact recommendations of the Sept. 11 commission, agreeing that the Senate had made an important concession to House Republicans and the Pentagon on keeping secret the size of the nation's overall intelligence budget.

The issue of budget secrecy had a major sticking point in the negotiations on a House-Senate conference committee, with House Republicans refusing to accept the Sept. 11 commission's recommendation that some budget figures should be declassified in an effort to force more accountability on spy agencies.

Anyone notice the pre-election day traffic surge? What do you think that was?

People like us knew the issues. The people who knew the issues weren't the ones hitting our sites. Hell, the people who knew the issues were us, the guys whose sites got hit. No, all that new traffic was people looking for information to justify their vote or figure out their vote.

Now, I know I got annoyed at people who were undecided in September. They're sort of people that make me hate going to McDonalds©.

You know, you go to McDonalds© on your break, get on that line. The counter person asks what someone wants and they say, "Hm, let me see…" and start scanning the posted price list. And I'm like, "What? You trying to tell me you didn't know what was in Micky D before you left your house? You trying to tell me you didn't look at the specials while you were on the line?"

Quote of note:

The September decision to let Mr. Velella out of jail was an embarrassment for Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who said he had never before heard of the panel, the Local Conditional Release Commission, even though his office appointed two of its four members.

Freeing Ex-Senator Violated the Law, City Panel Is Told
By JENNIFER STEINHAUER

The New York City Law Department has determined that an obscure mayoral panel acted illegally when it released former State Senator Guy J. Velella from jail three months into his yearlong sentence, paving the way for Mr. Velella and four other Rikers Island prisoners who were released by the commission this year to be sent back to jail, the commission announced yesterday.

Mr. Velella and the others have been informed that they must reapply for early release by next Tuesday, and that three days later the board will decide whether to grant the requests. If it does not, the five are likely to be ordered back to jail.

There's an ancient Taoist saying: "When the wrong man uses the right means, the right means works the wrong way." Applying "free market" principles to inherently non-market based concerns brings this to mind.

Anyway…

G.O.P. Plans to Give Environment Rules a Free-Market Tilt
By FELICITY BARRINGER and MICHAEL JANOFSKY

ASHINGTON, Nov. 7 - With the elections over, Congress and the Bush administration are moving ahead with ambitious environmental agendas that include revamping signature laws on air pollution and endangered species and reviving a moribund energy bill that would open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to energy exploration.

Judge Halts War-Crime Trial at Guantánamo
By NEIL A. LEWIS

Published: November 9, 2004

GUANTÁNAMO BAY, Cuba, Nov. 8 - A federal judge ruled Monday that President Bush had both overstepped his constitutional bounds and improperly brushed aside the Geneva Conventions in establishing military commissions to try detainees at the United States naval base here as war criminals.

The ruling by Judge James Robertson of United States District Court in Washington brought an abrupt halt to the trial here of one detainee, one of hundreds being held at Guantánamo as enemy combatants. It threw into doubt the future of the first set of United States military commission trials since the end of World War II as well as other legal proceedings devised by the administration to deal with suspected terrorists.

You don't need me to tell you about that, right?

Quote of note:

"It doesn't say anything about faith," Linwood Gunn, a lawyer for the suburban Atlanta school system, testified in U.S. District Court in Atlanta. "It doesn't say anything about religion."

What a weasel-worded avoidance of obvious intent.

Georgia School Board in Court Over Evolution Flap
Mon Nov 8, 2004 05:34 PM ET

By Paul Simao
ATLANTA (Reuters) - Lawyers for a Georgia school district and a group of parents clashed on Monday over the constitutionality of placing stickers that challenge the theory of evolution on textbooks.

Cobb County's school board, which placed the disclaimers on biology books in 2002 at the behest of hundreds of parents, many of them religious conservatives, rejected suggestions it had promoted religion in its classrooms in violation of the constitutional principle of separation of church and state.

I'm asking you to make a moral judgement

Consider.

Several months ago George Bush championed a constitutional amendment banning marriages where the partners were gay. A month and a half ago, the Republican Party put forth a political platform explicitly rejecting recognition of marriages and civil unions when the partners are gay.

Days before the election, George Bush broke with that platform during an interview with Charlie Gibson of ABC News. This while claiming John Kerry would say anything to get elected.

Days after the election he reconfirms his intent to push for the constitutional amendment.

Quote of note:

the election was unique in the assertiveness of evangelicals and the overt appeals made by the candidates to the faithful. Religious conservatives have been a force in national politics since Ronald Reagan's 1980 campaign. But in the past, evangelicals participated in politics reluctantly, at the urging of such figures as Jerry Falwell and, later, Pat Robertson. This time, more than 26 million of them turned out -- 23 percent of the electorate -- in local church-based networks coordinated closely with the Bush campaign.

For the President, a Vote of Full Faith and Credit
Evangelical Christians Shed Their Reluctance to Mix Religion and Politics on Election Day

Iran Says Will Retaliate if Nuclear Plants Hit
Mon Nov 8, 2004 09:02 AM ET
By Amir Paivar

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran threatened on Monday to strike back at Israel or any other country that attacked its nuclear facilities.

U.S. and Israeli officials accuse Iran of seeking to develop atomic bombs under cover of a civilian nuclear program. Iran denies the charges saying it only intends to produce electricity from nuclear power plants.

"If Israel or any other country attacks any site in Iran, we know no limits to threaten their interests," Deputy Revolutionary Guards Commander Mohammad-Baqer Zolqadr said.

"That means anywhere in the world, within their borders or outside it," he told reporters on Monday on the sidelines of an anti-U.S. conference in Tehran.

Christians See Court Appointments as Top Bush Aim
Fri Nov 5, 2004 12:13 PM ET
By Alan Elsner

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Christian conservative leaders say their top priority in President Bush's second term is the appointment of conservative judges to the Supreme Court and throughout the judicial system.

"We have high hopes of changing the judiciary. Every judicial appointment that President Bush makes will make the courts less radical and more in tune with the voters who turned out in Tuesday's election," said Gary Bauer, a prominent Christian conservative leader and president of American Values, a conservative pressure group.

---

Here's the problem.

U.S. Moves Toward a New Conservative Era
Sun Nov 7, 2004 12:28 PM ET
By David Morgan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Bush's election victory reflected a marked shift to the right which Republicans hope will usher in a generation of conservative rule by the party, analysts said.

There's several holes in this statement. First and foremost, Republicans aren't conservative.

Check this to see what I'm talking about.

Anyway…

Bush to Seek Gay-Marriage Ban in New Term -Aide
Sun Nov 7, 2004 12:28 PM ET
By Randall Mikkelsen

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Bush will renew a quest in his second term for a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage as essential to a "hopeful and decent" society, his top political aide said on Sunday.

Bush's call for a constitutional ban on gay marriages failed last year in Congress, but his position was seen as a key factor motivating Christian conservatives concerned about "moral values" to turn out in large numbers and help supply Bush with a winning margin in last week's election.

I guess Slashdot was right.

Your Rights : Google Image Index Just Not Updated
Posted by
on Sunday November 07, @05:45PM

from the breaking-news dept.

We ran a story earlier today about the lack of Abu Ghraib photos in Google's image index. We now have a response from Google stating that the image index simply hasn't been updated recently, as well as a fairly convincing demonstration from a Slashdot reader: Rahga writes "I put together a page that counters the 'Google Censors Abu Ghraib Images' story. It is the tale of a Morgan Webb picture on images.google.com that's been driving a ton of traffic to my webserver 7 months after it was removed."

Quote of note:

Safely reelected, President Bush vows to press on. He has already restated his commitment to securing "the freedom of all mankind." He has seized the opportunity to refresh the camouflage cloaking the actual enterprise to which he has committed the U.S. He thereby prevents the American people from gauging the costs entailed by that enterprise and the risks that it involves.

Through incessant repetition, words like "freedom" and "democracy" have become like an old coin, worn so thin as to defy even the most conscientious effort to distinguish between the real and the counterfeit.

But the course on which we have embarked since 9/11 — and that has landed us in Iraq — is not a true one. It is unwise, unsustainable and doomed to fail. How regrettable that in the presidential contest just concluded we have squandered the opportunity to discover that.

What the fuck is this about?

SEC. 9524. SCHOOL PRAYER.

(a) GUIDANCE- The Secretary shall provide and revise guidance, not later than September 1, 2002, and of every second year thereafter, to State educational agencies, local educational agencies, and the public on constitutionally protected prayer in public elementary schools and secondary schools, including making the guidance available on the Internet. The guidance shall be reviewed, prior to distribution, by the Office of Legal Counsel of the Department of Justice for verification that the guidance represents the current state of the law concerning constitutionally protected prayer in public elementary schools and secondary schools.

Referring to the same article as the post immediately preceding this one.

As I watch the way NCLB progresses, I can almost guarantee people are going to be REALLY UNHAPPY with the outcome.

Schools in low-income communities that fail to meet their targets two years in a row are required to offer transfers to their students.

That would be schools that receive Title I funds. Mind you, these schools tend to be underfunded even with Title I (and don't go whining "liberal" on me…that link goes to one of the strongest NCLB proponents around—unfortunately, they believe the rhetoric and therefore tend to point out the problems not even being addressed as well as supportive stuff).

The "communal role" mentioned right up front actually gets very little coverage in the article. More coverage (appropriately) is given to the institutional impediments to folks doing what they think NCLB is intended to allow.

Few Parents Move Their Children Out of Failing Schools
Federal law allows transfers, but critics say it ignores the communal role of local campuses.
By Duke Helfand and Joel Rubin
Times Staff Writers

November 8, 2004

More than 1 million students in the nation's largest urban school districts have remained at poor-performing campuses despite a federal law that allows them a chance to escape to better schools.

The offer extended by the No Child Left Behind education law is intended to expand school choices for children in low-income communities.

Quote of note:

Assembling interest group wish lists and agendas is a postelection rite in Washington, a modern-day spoils system in action. For businesses, spending time and money on a campaign is a practical and tactical decision, literally an investment.

Business Groups Invested in Races, Now Wait for Returns
After a hefty push for Republican candidates, industry organizations form their wish lists.
By Tom Hamburger
Times Staff Writer

November 8, 2004

WASHINGTON — Lobbyists for the nation's leading business groups have been toasting the success of what they describe as an unprecedented effort this year to help elect President Bush and Republican congressional candidates. Now they plan to collect on that investment.

I got up too damn early.

I found out there are over 150 episodes of Yu-Gi-Oh! There goes my DVD collection plans…it's bad enough that I have seven years of Stargate SG-1 (not to mention the eighth year AND the the first 10 episodes of Stargate Atlantis…and I feel no guilt because when they are relased on DVD I'll get them the first week like I did with all the other years).

I have no idea why but I've been singing "Wookin Pa Nub" all damn morning.

Suffice to say I'm in a pretty strange mood.

Because they ask the wrong people. They should have asked this brilliant apostate.

I get very antsy when I see this entire election outcome being blamed on radical conservatism or on ignorance or stupidity.

Because really when people talk about "radical" conservativism, what they really mean is Southern conservativism, specifically the kind that originated in the Southern Baptist church in the late 70's/early 80's. And that makes me unhappy.

I am an ex-Southern conservative. You can say, 'oh, Aja, you're nothing like them,' but I am. I see my Southern Baptist upbringing in myself in countless ways every day. All the things that people claim to love about me are things that spring directly from a very strong Christian, faith-based childhood. I may not have read the bible every day but I know my sunday school stories, and I never ever doubted as a child that, yes, Jesus loved me. I seek forgiveness everywhere, forgive whenever I can, and still struggle with not having forgiveness from certain people for things I have done, because forgiveness is a cornerstone of my background--as are a really detrimental leaning towards submissiveness, a penchant for fried chicken, and a really annoying reflex tendency to see bad things and think 'ack, end of the world!'

There's soooooo much I want to quote here:

It starts with the fact that we as conservative Christians are taught to see America as our land.  I mean, you guys in Europe and the loonies on the East and West Coasts think the Founding Fathers died to bring us religious freedom.  They so did not.  They died to give new Christianity a place where it could flourish.  And if you think that Catholicism was flourishing perfectly fine before that, thank you, then you don't understand conservative Christianity.  See, I grew up being taught that Catholicism was
almost-sort-of-not-quite-but-we-won't-talk-about-it cult.  Really.  Lots of Southern Baptists believe Catholicism is a cult, despite the fact that it is the largest practiced religion in the world.  If you understand that we can believe that about Catholicism then maybe you can understand that American Conservative Christian values don't necessarily fit into any kind of historical, cultural, or anthropological perspective. They never really have. 

Conservative Christians are taught all our lives that we are constantly engaged in spiritual warfare.  When I was in 6th grade I read a book called This Present Darkness by novelist Frank Peretti, who really kicked off the Christian fantasy genre and preceded those awful Left Behind guys by like 10 years.  I read this book and went around fancying that I saw angels around me, fighting demons everywhere, a great heavenly host doing battle with unseen forces of darkness.  And I can't really explain to anybody who isn't familiar with conservative Christianity, but we are taught that this is real.  Demons? Real. Angelic warfare? Real.  That passage in Ephesians about putting on the full armor of God?  We take that seriously.  We take everything Paul said seriously, actually. Way,
way, way too seriously, but the reason we take it so seriously is because Paul has this way of delineating Christianity as a practice so that you can live it out very easily.  He basically teaches Christians that they are to live every day as though they are battling persecution.  Paul is the classic propagator of the Us/Them mentality.  Them is the World.  The World is evil and sinful and wants to persecute Us.  It is Our job as Conservative Christians to don our armor and wage war against the World. 

When you grow up being raised in this environment, whether you give it any credence or not, what starts to happen is that you see things very easily in terms of whether they fit into the "Us" category or the "World" category.  Since, um, most things fall into the World category, it gets very easy to compartmentalize in your head, and to, for example, start thinking, "the media is a tool of Satan, I shouldn't believe what people are telling me."  And even if you don't think "TOOL OF SATAN!!!!" every time you hear the media, if you've heard other people around you and in your church say it enough, even subconsciously you start doubting the media.  How this plays out is that you begin to filter your environment as a conservative christian based on what you can easily categorize.  Once you have identified, say, George Bush, as one of Us, it's much easier to disregard negative news about him because the Media is one of Them, and the two things can be easily canceled out in your mind. 

Quote of note:

Ratzinger's visibility and the pope's frailty have reawakened the question of who is in charge at the Vatican. Some observers predicted that he would be a strong candidate to succeed John Paul II. His conservatism fits with the thinking of most of the cardinal electors picked by John Paul II. But at 77, Ratzinger is the oldest of the so-called papabili, cardinals frequently mentioned as papal candidates.

''In spite of his age, Ratzinger has recently jumped to the top of the list of candidates," wrote one Vatican watcher, Sandro Magister, in L'Espresso magazine recently. ''Some look at him as if he were already de facto pope, the stony defender of the faith in a church under attack from modernity."

Vatican watchers track rise of key cardinal

Reminder of note, from the NY Times:

But as the hour passed, Bush kept coming back to the thing most on his mind: his second term.

''I'm going to come out strong after my swearing in,'' Bush said, ''with fundamental tax reform, tort reform, privatizing of Social Security.'' The victories he expects in November, he said, will give us ''two years, at least, until the next midterm. We have to move quickly, because after that I'll be quacking like a duck.''

Bush's agenda may face hurdles

Gulf war veteran sues over order to serve 13 years after discharge
By Associated Press | November 7, 2004

HONOLULU -- A veteran of the Persian Gulf War of 1991 is suing the Army after it ordered him to report for duty 13 years after he was honorably discharged from active duty and eight years after he left the reserves.

Kauai resident David Miyasato received word of his reactivation in September, but says he thinks he completed his eight-year obligation to the Army long ago.

"I was shocked," Miyasato said Friday. "I never expected to see something like that after being out of the service for 13 years."

It's possible to get into a decent conversation at Blogcritics.

Of course,not all of them go well…

This is my favorite map of voting patterns.Click that dude to get the full sized image.

Paul Krugman left some advice for Democrats on his way out the door for a few months. Since I've appreciated his columns so much I thought I ought to link it, even though I'm late with it.

I don't know that I'm all that invested in the discussion on what the Democratic Party's next move is. For Democrats, though…more to the point for progressives…I have a suggestion.

Remember the issue that convinced you to become active these past few months. If your issue was that George Bush sucks or the Democratic Party is being suppressed, prepare to be a supporter because your issue now is to limit the damage of the next four years. A lot can be done in that time but it can be undone. There are ways around even skewed Supreme Court benches.

New Standards for Elections

The 2004 election may not have an asterisk next to it the way the 2000 election does, but the mechanics of our democracy remained badly flawed. From untrustworthy electronic voting machines, to partisan secretaries of state, to outrageously long lines at the polls, the election system was far from what voters are entitled to.

It's patently obvious that presidential elections, at least, should be conducted under uniform rules. Voters in Alaska and Texas should not have different levels of protection when it comes to their right to cast a ballot and have it counted. It's ridiculous that citizens who vote in one place have to show picture ID while others do not, that a person who accidentally walks into the wrong polling place can cast a provisional ballot that will be counted in one state but thrown out in another. States may have the right to set their own standards for local elections, but picking the president is a national enterprise.

…now that my voice is back online I guess I have a thing or two to post about.

Now that I'm basically done I can tell you why the site went dark for a couple days.

I've converted Prometheus 6 from the Drupal4Blogger fork (that was based on version 4.4) to Drupal version 4.5. This puts me back with the main development branch. I've added some pretty funky capabilities…the selfish stuff includes scheduling posts for publication and unpublication, and more file and image handling capabilities, like file attachments to posts.

Registered users will notice a new menu entry: view inbox. That's for private messages to other registered users. They can also subscribe to posts, to get email when there's a change or comment (still have to come here to read it though). Each post and comment has a link to PM the author.

Registered users will also see a new members link takes you to a list of members (of course). Clicking the username takes you to the user's profile and a link to PM the user. Registered users can also upload a 100x100 pixel avatar. Check your user profiles, I think you'll find some interesting options there.

I was one of the many progressives that had to reassess things a bit after the last election. The comments made about that reassessment…okay, they weren't about the reassessment but they were attached to the post…make need to ask the question in the title of Republicans in general.

Make no mistake, my goals haven't changed because they've never been attached to any particular political party. And my views haven't changed…I still see him as a prancing absurdity.

But it was said:

To state the blindingly obvious, Keyes is not even vaguely representative of the Republican Party.

and

Alan Keyes was a joke. Republicans, Democrats, Independents, etc. all knew that.