I went to Negrophile to steal George's blogroll. Literally hundreds of Black folks with blogs listed there.My intent is to go down the list looking for sociopolitical types.

At the top of the list I see a link for the 2005 Black Weblogs Awards.

I don't know who runs the joint, but that George links to it is a good sign, as is the fact that EJ Flavors on his (super) short list. That there are NO PERMALINKS FOR THE BLOG ENTRIES is a bad sign, but a forgivable one.

I think y'all should go over there and vote for somebody. I think Black folks recognizing Black folks sets a nice precedent.

Quote of note:

What Wal-Mart's abuses have in common, they say, is a disregard for the public interest in a single-minded pursuit of the bottom line. Low labor costs and a disregard for the law have been central to the company's way of doing business. A Wal-Mart that paid its employees generously, offered decent worker healthcare and was considerate of its community neighbors -- the critics' major demands -- would not be Wal-Mart: It would be, essentially, a bunch of stores.

Wal-Mart's P.R. war
Activists against the behemoth think this is their year: Two new national campaigns, a critical upcoming documentary and more stores thwarted. But can they force America's largest private employer to change its ways?
By Liza Featherstone

Hip-Hop Argot Meets Corporate Cant, All to Sell Chryslers

By DANNY HAKIM

The former chairman of Chrysler, Lee A. Iacocca, has been called a lot of things in his time, but Mocha Cocca and I-ka-zizzle are new.

The nicknames come from Snoop Dogg - Mr. Iacocca's new sidekick in a Chrysler commercial that starts Saturday. Mr. Iacocca, 80, is Chrysler's most famous retiree and has been reprising his role as company pitchman.

Snoop Dogg, whose real name is Calvin Broadus, is arguably Chrysler's most famous enthusiast. Last year, the rapper, actor, car buff and sometime pornographer left a voice mail at Chrysler's West Coast office demanding the new Chrysler 300 sedan. The 300C he later received is black with tinted windows.

Check the NY Times book review, which also has links to the first chapter of each book. I haven't read the chapters yet, but if I don't come back to complain you can assume they don't suck.

Setting Them Free
By ADAM GOODHEART

IN the summer of 1814, a young Virginian named Edward Coles -- a protégé and family friend of Thomas Jefferson -- wrote to his mentor asking for some advice. Coles, who had inherited slaves from his father, was considering setting them free, and sent off a letter seeking Jefferson's blessing and guidance.

When the reply came from Monticello, however, it scolded Coles for having ever considered ''abandoning this property, and your country with it.'' Jefferson insisted he abhorred slavery, and foresaw its eventual demise, ''whether brought on by the generous energy of our own minds'' or by a ''bloody process.'' Until that presumably distant day, however, it was the duty of every slaveholding gentleman to shoulder the ancestral burden as best he could, for the good of both races: there was no place for free blacks in a slave-based society. In a letter to another correspondent several years later, Jefferson expressed himself in starker metaphorical terms: ''We have the wolf by the ear, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go.''

These remarks -- especially the famous ''wolf by the ear'' comment -- have long been quoted by historians to illustrate the supposed predicament of antebellum America: the South simply could not free its slaves, and since the North would not let it keep them, a bloody struggle between the two was inevitable. But what if Jefferson was wrong? What if the dreaded wolf would merely have licked his lips, trotted off and gone quietly about its business, had Southerners just mustered the courage to release their grip?

Quote of note:

"I cannot watch this brand of baseball any longer. A truly awful, pathetic, old team that only promises to be worse two years from now. It's just awful and bad to watch. Brain-dead Caribbean hitters hacking at slop nightly.''

You should read the whole article. Felipe Alou, Edgardo Alfonzo and Omar Vizquel, in my opinion, understand the value of an apology in situations like this.

Alou, players miffed at host
KNBR suspends Krueger after comments
- Jorge L. Ortiz, Chronicle Staff Writer
Saturday, August 6, 2005

Derogatory comments by KNBR's Larry Krueger about the Giants' Latin players and Felipe Alou evoked an impassioned response from the club's manager on Friday and led to the talk show host getting suspended for a week without pay.

I was just going to write something political, then this addition to the Borg files popped up.

Remote-Controlled Humans
Leah Hoffmann, 08.04.05, 10:00 AM ET

Smiling nervously, the young woman walks forward in a straight line. Suddenly, she veers to the right. She stumbles and stops, attempting to regain her balance, and continues to walk forward. And then she veers off to the left.

No, she's not intoxicated. The young lady's vestibular system, which controls her sense of movement and balance, has been thrown off-kilter by two weak electrical currents delivered just behind her ears. (Click here to see video of a remotely controlled woman.)

This sort of electrical stimulation is known as galvanic vestibular stimulation, or GVS. When a weak DC current is delivered to the mastoid behind your ear, your body responds by shifting your balance toward the anode. The stronger the current, the more powerful its pull. If it is strong enough, it not only throws you off balance but alters the course of your movement.

They're thinking this may go over well with gamers and flight training simulators. But there's a really bizarre suggested use: collision avoidance.

One day I need to understand why the disdain for Dr. Rice is so much more virulent than that for General Powell. Somehow I get the sense I won't be pleased when I figure it out.

The NY Times is worried about the inevitable end of the expansion of the real estate market.

Even a soft landing, however, would probably have a big impact on employment and consumer spending. For policy makers and consumers, the better part of prudence would be to assume that rising unaffordability was an early warning sign that the market was nearing a top.

They're late. The first interest-only repayment option should have been that sign.

Real estate is weird. The economic activity around real estate doesn't track to what we expect based on patterns we see in most everything else...prices don't drop because demand never drops, and because people will just stay in their home (assuming they can afford the mortgage payments) rather than sell for a loss (unlike, say, the stock market).

Quote of note:

The event recalled the 1994 attack carried out by Baruch Goldstein, a Jewish settler from New York who gunned down 29 Palestinians in a mosque at the Tomb of the Patriarchs in the West Bank city of Hebron. Goldstein, who was also dressed in an army uniform, was killed before he could leave the mosque. The shooting marked the beginning of a difficult period for the Oslo accords between Israel and the Palestinians signed the previous year.

Jewish Settler Kills Four Israeli Arabs In Attack on Bus
By Scott Wilson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, August 5, 2005; Page A01

JERUSALEM, Aug. 4 -- A Jewish settler absent without leave from the Israeli army opened fire Thursday on a public bus traveling to an Arab town in northern Israel, killing at least four people and wounding 10. In the immediate aftermath, passengers swarmed the gunman, killing him before he could leave the bus.

Remember in October when IndyMedia was taken offline for a week because the FBI subpoenaed their hard drives?

Well, that's not quite how it went.

In October 2004, a federal prosecutor sent a subpoena to Rackspace Managed Hosting of San Antonio, Texas, as part of an investigation underway in Italy into an attempted murder. Under a mutual legal assistance treaty, the U.S. government is required to help other nations secure evidence in certain criminal cases.

The newly disclosed subpoena, which has been partially redacted, asks only for specific "log files."

But Rackspace turned over the entire hard drive at the time, taking the server offline and effectively pulling the plug on more than 20 Independent Media Center Web sites for about a week.

Jonathan Chait is on point with How Bush thinks: intuition over intellect.

Facts don't matter to him. What matters is how he feels about the person in question.

He opens with the perfect example: Bush's reaction to hearing his friend Rafael Palmeiro got a positive test result for steroids as strong as his declaration that he'd never used them. Palmeiro is so busted...and Bush says

"Rafael Palmeiro is a friend. He testified in public and I believe him. He's the kind of person that's going to stand up in front of the Klieg lights and say he didn't use steroids, and I believe him."

This is a perfect example because it's simple and public. One could always believe Bush has some information about Putin or Iran or the United Nations that we, the public, do not. In fact, I do assume that, which is why I'm so careful about the particular accusations I make. But in this case we know as much as Bush about ol' Rafe. But Bush stares biochemistry in the eye and demands it yield to faith...and there are no other considerations he could make. On the one hand a medical report that says the boy been juicin'. On the other, Bush's opinion, which was formed in ignorance of the physical fact of the case. A purer case of denial has never been seen before by man or woman.

I'm out...don't know how long. This means anonymous comments probably won't see the light of day until tomorrow.

Enjoy your day folks...I'll enjoy mine.

Quote of note:

When the year started, President Bush made spending restraint a mantra, laying out an austere budget that would freeze non-security discretionary spending for five years and setting firm cost limits on transportation and energy bills. But now, as Congress fills in the details of the budget plan, there is little interest in making deep cuts and enormous pressure to spend.

Lawmakers have seen little to fear from a political backlash, some acknowledge, and Bush has yet to wield his veto pen. In fact, the White House has proved itself largely unable to overcome the institutional forces that have long driven lawmakers to ply their parochial interests with cash.

In Congress, the GOP Embraces Its Spending Side
By Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, August 4, 2005; Page A01

Digital History is a seriously rich source of information on American history...and you humans with your truncated perceptions of time seriously need such a well organized site.

I like that they've made a serious effort to integrate the various ethnic stories into the narrative. EVERYBODY is in the mix...the Irish:

In the economic sphere, Irish Catholics, more than any other European ethnic group, emphasized economic solidarity, collective action, and politics as keys to improving their economic position and resisting discrimination. Instead of emphasizing individual upward mobility, many Irish men found work in more egalitarian situations, on labor gangs or construction crews or as longshoremen. Irish Catholic men were also especially likely to seek government employment (especially as police officers) or to find jobs under contractors who held city contracts or in public utilities, such as street railways. During the 19th century, Irish Catholics often took the lead in forming and supporting labor unions.

This high degree of ethnic solidarity reflected both the discrimination that Irish Catholics faced as well as their belief that their job security and economic well-being depended on ethnic unity in the face of hostility from the nation's Protestant majority.

...Asians

Newsweek asks the musical question, could "Over There" affect the already-fragile poll numbers on Iraq?

They bloody well hope it does.

We live in a country where many people's historical knowledge consists entirely of memories from made-for-TV, based on a true experience docudramas. Our view of the first war the country has actually lost has changed significantly, in large part because we don't see the war anymore...we see idealizations of the war. From Vietnam at 24 Frames a Second:

Encapsulating the ten chapters of this book into types of films by era reveals the cathartic nature of the oeuvre. The "Early Years" typified our ignorance and naïveté in Southeast Asia. The years concomitant to the war itself had very few direct treatments of it. Films that did exist often recontextualized Vietnam via allegory or metaphor. Most often we just ignored the war. The pragmatic for-profit studios recoiled from the unpopular and lethal conflict, assuming that it was box office poison. However, by the late 1970s a huge delayed Hollywood reaction was unleashed with many important portrayals of the war. This intensity dissipated by the early 1980s to be replaced by a cinematic reworking of the conflict in order to afford us the opportunity to "win" via Ramboesque fantasy. The late 1980s films revealed a desire to embrace the individual veterans and move away from the divisive political arguments. The Gulf War and 1990s movies reinforced the realization that the veterans of Vietnam had been shortchanged. [P6: emphasis added]

Title:  Vietnam at 24 Frames a Second: A Critical and Thematic Analysis of over 400 Films About the Vietnam War (Texas Film and Media Studies Series)
Author:  Jeremy M. Devine
Amazon price: $19.95 USD

Interesting book.

A higher law
August 4, 2005

...On July 27, the Denver head of a religious order said the group would pay increased child support for the son of one of its priests, even though the courts had said it didn't have to. "You don't not take care of the kid," Father Thomas Picton, leader of the Denver Province of the Redemptorists, said in refreshingly plain English about what is plainly the right course of action. (In doing so, he countermanded subordinates who put the child's mother through a tough court battle, which she lost.) Picton said he also would encourage the priest, Arturo Uribe, to get counseling on fatherhood, though he has never met the 12-year-old son he fathered while a seminarian.

...but the guy Father Picton countermanded is now at the Vatican, in the position held by Pope Benedict XVI just before his elevation.

Harry/Draco shippers got press!

If you're an obsessed Harry Potter fan, Voldemort isn't the problem. It's Hermione versus Ginny.
- Neva Chonin, Chronicle Critic at Large
Wednesday, August 3, 2005

For the Harry Potter fan, puberty brings nothing but trouble. There was a time when the young protagonist of J.K. Rowling's magical saga spent his days at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry blithely dodging hexes, solving improbable mysteries and grappling with his twin roles as savior of the wizarding world and best-selling literary phenomenon. Simple stuff.

Then came adolescence and "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince," the penultimate installment in Rowling's seven-part series. His hormones flowing thicker than chilled Polyjuice, a teenage Harry fell hard for his best friend Ron Weasley's sister, Ginny. Ron, in turn, toppled into the arms of Harry's other best friend and Hogwarts' resident genius, Hermione Granger. Kissing and peril and heroism ensued. Again, simple stuff.

Rock-toss case to be mediated
Girl, 11, charged with felony assault to be spared trial
- Greg Lucas and Carla Marinucci, Chronicle Staff Writers
Thursday, August 4, 2005

An 11-year-old Fresno girl charged with felony assault for throwing a rock at an 8-year-old boy who pelted her with a water balloon avoided a trial Wednesday in Juvenile Court by agreeing to meet with the boy to work out their differences.

...The highly charged case gained international attention, much of it focused on how Fresno police officers handled the matter, which occurred in one of the city's lower-income neighborhoods.

After responding to a 911 call for an ambulance on April 29, police officers arrived at the small house where Maribel had been playing with her younger brother and some of his friends. Vang held a towel to his bloody forehead.

The two reports on which the story is based are actual guilty parties here. Comparing quarterly employer cost increases to annual inflation rates confuses the issue unnecessarily. Working with annualized rates for both would make meaningful comparisons easier...and, in fact, I believe comparing the consumer inflation rate to the economy's rate of growth isn't a meaningful one.

Quote of note:

"The economy's doing fine, except if you figure in working families," said Jared Bernstein, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a think tank focused on labor issues. "We're posting great numbers in aggregate demand, yet the lousiest on record for wage growth."

Pay Lags Behind Inflation
Overall Economy Keeps Growing, Commerce Dept. Says
By Nell Henderson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, July 30, 2005; Page D01

Or even just tell me which dryer load will make it disappear.

Computer helps predict time, place of Yonkers robbery
By WILL DAVID
THE JOURNAL NEWS
(Original Publication: July 22, 2005)

Alerted to a pattern identified with the help of a computer, uniformed officers from the 3rd Precinct were keeping a close watch on South Broadway when they arrested two people accused of holding up a 25-year-old city woman.

Lt. James McLaughlin, who is working in the Technical Support Unit to help police use computers to fight crime, evaluated robberies in southwest Yonkers and told the department there would be a robbery between 8 p.m. and midnight Wednesday on South Broadway.

"He predicted it and he was right," Police Commissioner Robert Taggart said.

Anthony Jimenez, 17, of Gastonia, N.C., and Richard Pino, 20, of 108 Highland Ave., Yonkers, were arrested and two guns confiscated after the woman was robbed of her cell phone at 8:44 p.m. Wednesday at South Broadway and Ludlow Street, police said. They were charged with first-degree robbery and first-degree criminal use of a firearm, both felonies.

...primary of which is, is the military required to accept any application for transfer?

Peace Corps Option for Military Recruits Sparks Concerns
By Alan Cooperman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, August 2, 2005; Page A11

The U.S. military, struggling to fill its voluntary ranks, is offering to allow recruits to meet part of their military obligations by serving in the Peace Corps, which has resisted any ties to the Defense Department or U.S. intelligence agencies since its founding in 1961.

The recruitment program has sparked debate and rising opposition among current and former Peace Corps officials. Some welcome it as a way to expand the cadre of idealistic volunteers created by President John F. Kennedy. But many say it could lead to suspicions abroad that the Peace Corps, which has 7,733 workers in 73 countries, is working together with the U.S. armed forces.

Once Over Lightly

Watching CNN's "American Morning" today, CJR Daily learned that President Bush had spoken out in favor of teaching intelligent design in schools. Here's how CNN's Carol Costello broke it down:

President Bush reportedly said intelligent design should be taught in public schools. The president told reporters from several Texas newspapers that he believes intelligent design should be taught alongside evolution. The president, however, declined to share his own personal views. Christian conservatives have called on schools to teach intelligent design, [which is] the theory that life is too complex to be explained by evolution alone, implying that a higher power had a role in creation.

Over here a little detail on The Wisdom of Dubya:

Quote of note:

Alaska, the third-least populated state, got the fourth most in earmarks, $941 million, thanks largely to the work of its lone representative, Transportation Committee Chairman Don Young. That included $231 million for a bridge near Anchorage to be named "Don Young's Way" in honor of the Republican.

Naming a bridge after yourself is kind of...tacky, isn't it Don?

Highway Bill Full of Special Projects
Multiyear Highway Bill Contains Record Number of Special Projects Requested by Lawmakers
By JIM ABRAMS
The Associated Press

Aug. 3, 2005 - When President Eisenhower proposed the first national highway bill, there were two projects singled out for funding. The latest version has, by one estimate, 6,371 of these special projects, a record that some say politicians should be ashamed of.

Quote of note:

That the "unprotected intercourse" argument was offered in Levada's name made it especially shocking to some Catholics. The former archbishop is now chief guardian of Catholic doctrine worldwide. The archbishop's new post as prefect of the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith was last held by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger ànow Pope Benedict XVI.

Faithful Furious Over Tactic
Catholics express shock over lawyer's arguments that a woman who sued Portland archdiocese for child support should have used birth control.
By William Lobdell
Times Staff Writer
August 3, 2005

Governor Pataki's Veto

Gov. George Pataki's decision to veto a sensible bill that would make an emergency contraceptive available without a prescription is a major disappointment. The measure, which was passed by the New York State Legislature with heartening support from the Republican leaders of the State Senate, would have allowed a trained nurse or pharmacist to dispense a higher dose of a common oral contraceptive as a way to block pregnancy within 72 hours of unprotected sex.

The governor's action was all the more disheartening since the federal Food and Drug Administration continues to delay its long-promised decision on an application to allow nonprescription access to emergency contraception. Sparing women the time and expense of doctors' visits to get the medication - a form of contraception, not abortion - would remove a big obstacle to its use, thereby cutting down on the number of unintended pregnancies and, experts project, abortions.

Attention

The help Dr. Rekow and her team are asking from their colleagues is at once minor and sweeping. But with support from a $2 million grant from the Department of Homeland Security, N.Y.U. recently became the first of the country's 57 dental schools to mandate terrorism preparedness for its students. All graduates are now required to have a fundamental working knowledge of proper response to a variety of natural and terrorist threats - biological, chemical and radiological.

...translates to pork, of course.

Dentists Prepare to Be on Front Line of Civil Defense
By RICHARD MORGAN

Past the five-foot-tall tanks of nitrogen gas, through a narrow, snaking hallway, behind double doors, just past the safety shower, they convene on the 10th floor of a building in Manhattan.

Quote of note:

At no time in the past three years has the White House attributed its assertions about Iran to US intelligence, as it did about Iraq in the run-up to the March 2003 invasion. Instead, it has pointed to years of Iranian concealment and questioned why a country with as much oil as Iran would require a large-scale nuclear energy program.

Nuclear analysis on Iran shifts
Key arms step said decade away
By Dafna Linzer, Associated Press  |  August 2, 2005

WASHINGTON -- A major US intelligence review has projected that Iran is about a decade away from manufacturing the key ingredient for a nuclear weapon, roughly doubling the previous estimate of five years, according to government sources with firsthand knowledge of the new analysis.

Even sane Conservatives would participate.

America's 'terrible thing'
By James Carroll  |  August 2, 2005

...And so with Iraq. Under George W. Bush, America has done and is doing a terrible thing in that nation. Yet to hear the war described in Washington, one would still think it is an exercise in nation building, democracy, humanitarian intervention -- women's liberation. Indeed, the administration's language mavens last week began eschewing the word ''war," which is a sure sign they know it is lost. The hard truth is that we have destroyed the place we claimed to want to rescue, and no matter what tactics the improvising Pentagon adopts (US troops withdraw? US forces escalate?), the situation will only worsen. Political pressures require Bush to pretend that a positive outcome hovers at the horizon in Iraq, but that is a mirage. Together with Tony Blair, he also denies that terror attacks a world away from Baghdad constitute a second front in the Iraq war, but that too is self-serving illusion. The coalition of denial.

Quote of note:

The involvement of gangs in immigrant smuggling, gangs' sophisticated ability to produce fake Social Security cards and driver's licenses, and their large number of foreign-born members are leading law enforcement authorities and Congress to place renewed emphasis on immigration law as a tool for combating gangs and on anti-gang measures as a way to fight immigration fraud.

Separate from the Homeland Security effort, Rep. J. Randy Forbes (R-Va.) is working with law enforcement groups, including some in Los Angeles, and others to push a bill that would allow police to deport legal and illegal immigrants who are found to be members of a violent criminal gang, regardless of whether they have committed a crime.

Could be worse...they could be enslaved rather than deported...

Hundreds Held in Anti-Gang Crackdown
A recent U.S. initiative netted 582 arrests last month, 26 in Los Angeles. Most suspects could be deported as illegal immigrants.
By Nicole Gaouette
Times Staff Writer
August 2, 2005

Things I don't understand:

Although Doswell spent nearly two decades in prison, neither he nor his family said they were angry.

"I couldn't walk around with anger and bitterness," said Doswell, speaking on a cell phone for what he said was the first time. "It would have done me more harm than good."

Doswell spent his years in prison getting an associate's degree, learning to speak Spanish and mastering seven musical instruments, including the guitar, saxophone, flute, drums and trumpet.

Oh, I not only could walk around with anger and bitterness, I would.

At the time, Pittsburgh police identified mug shots of people charged with rape with the letter "R." Doswell insisted witnesses identified him as the rapist only because "R" appeared under his mug shot.

According to the Innocence Project, his photo was the only one with an "R."

His photo was marked because an ex-girlfriend had accused him of rape, but he was acquitted of that charge. Police officials say they no longer mark photos of rape suspects with an "R."

Yup. Mad anger. Mad bitterness

DNA Test Frees Pa. Man After 19 Years
By RAMESH SANTANAM
Associated Press Writer
1:08 AM PDT, August 2, 2005

Quote of note:

Needing the workers as witnesses against lawbreaking bosses, they deliberately excluded Immigration and Naturalization Service agents from their raids, encouraging the workers to file complaints and serve as witnesses in hearings.

This wildly successful approach, dubbed the Targeted Industries Partnership Program, sent a shock wave throughout California's garment and agricultural industries. One positive result was to help level the playing field for those employers who obeyed the law but saw their profit margins slashed by those competitors that did not.

A welcome return to enforcing labor laws
Robert Scheer
August 2, 2005

DeLay's Dirty Trick

Much of the dirty business of Congress is done outside of public debate, during conference negotiations between the House and Senate Republican leadership, after legislation has passed. Eleventh-hour language added to appease the Christian right, repay big business or bring controversial pork-barrel projects back home has become a regular practice for Republicans.

House Majority Leader Tom DeLay took this shady scheming to a new low last week, when he "mysteriously inserted" a $1.5 billion sweetheart deal for Houston oil companies into a massive energy bill that supposedly had been finalized. The provision, according to the sharp eye of Rep. Henry Waxman, stipulates that 75 percent of the $1.5 billion allocated for deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico must go toward "a corporation that is constructed as a consortium."

The leading contender for the contract just happens to be the Research Partnership to Secure Energy for America consortium, based in DeLay's Sugar Land, Texas, district. Its members include war profiteer Halliburton and Marathon Oil, under SEC investigation for bribing the president of Equatorial Guinea for oil rights. Governor Rick Perry created the consortium in March 2004, promising 1,500 jobs. "None had been created as of last December," AP reports.

Yes, I said we might as well get used to white folks blaming us for everything. But I'm not dispairing.

In other race news, P6 seems a bit despairing. Experience may wave a weary hand, but youth and zeal is determined to tell the white folk to go to hell for their blaming us for everything under the sun. And if they don't like that, they can kiss my black ass. Somehow this is very personally satisfying to type.

Do I seem like getting blamed for all the dire racial ills of the nation ever stopped me?

Um, no.

I just get pissed sometimes, and I've learned to be real about that.

Toledo Police Allegedly Helped Cover Up Sex Abuse by Priests
Associated Press
Monday, August 1, 2005; Page A18

TOLEDO, July 31 -- Police helped the Catholic Diocese of Toledo cover up sex abuse allegations for several decades, refusing to investigate or arrest priests suspected of molesting children, a newspaper reported Sunday.

The Blade, relying on interviews with former officers and a review of court and diocese records, found at least five instances since the 1950s of police covering up allegations of abuse.

Four former officers said Anthony Bosch, a Catholic who was chief of the Toledo department from 1956 to 1970, established an unwritten rule that priests could not be arrested.

1. This is an open thread

2. I just got a request for a blogroll link. I've been really negligent of the ol' roll but were I actively maintaining it I would have to say "not yet." I'm not dissing, I want to school you a bit.

A brand new site rarely has anything for anyone to link to. Your first post would have to be brilliant, and even then you'd need to follow up well. So what you want to do, since you've chosen a topic to pursue, is get some good material to frame your editorializing. You don't have enough original material when you start out to establish your position.

You want to comment on the news, so go to Google and/or Yahoo! and set up some news alerts that key in on your issues. This will help you keep fresh content coming. You don't have to get nuts, but people only come by when they expect to see something they haven't seen before. So fresh is good.

This is just too rich to ignore.

Quote of note:

...the Lazerine brothers stand out in the rap world: they are suburban white kids, two seconds out of their teens, who are publishing a quarterly magazine while still in college.

..."We did not start this to make money off of hip-hop," Devin said. "Most of the consumers are white kids from the suburbs, like us. I think it's like a mutual respect."

Rap-Up is not audited, but the brothers say that the magazine is already being sold in more than 20 countries and its outlets include Wal-Mart, Barnes & Noble, Borders and Tower Records. The spring issue had a circulation of 42,000, according to reports from their distributors and wholesalers. The summer issue circulation jumped to 80,000, they said.

Young Suburbanites Publish a Hip-Hop Magazine
By FELICIA R. LEE

Quote of note:

...a serious effort either to transform the world or to dismantle the welfare state would require sacrifices Mr. Bush hasn't been willing to make.

Triumph of the Machine
By PAUL KRUGMAN

The campaign for Social Security privatization has degenerated into farce. The "global war on terrorism" has been downgraded to the "global struggle against violent extremism" (pronounced gee-save), which is just embarrassing. Baghdad is a nightmare, Basra is a militia-run theocracy, and officials are talking about withdrawing troops from Iraq next year (just in time for the U.S. midterm elections).

Quote of note:

...it did not take her long to conclude that the chaos was continuing, and that much of the problem was Prison Health itself.

Though the company had promised the help of other doctors, she said, she was left alone to care for not only the 230 men in the H.I.V. unit, but the 1,800 other prisoners, too. Nurses were so poorly trained, Dr. Chijide said, that they neglected to hand out life-sustaining drugs or gave the wrong ones. Medical charts were a mess, she said, and often it was impossible to find such basic items as a thermometer, or even soap.

Dr. Chijide lasted barely three months. After she complained in writing, Prison Health suspended her for reasons it would not disclose, and she quit.

A Company's Troubled Answer for Prisoners With H.I.V.
By PAUL von ZIELBAUER

Getting a foot in the school door
As the Corp. for Public Broadcasting enlists new-media firms to help teach history, concerns arise about commercialization.
By Matea Gold
Times Staff Writer
August 1, 2005

NEW YORK -- When the Corp. for Public Broadcasting announced in the spring the launch of an ambitious program aimed at expanding middle- and high-school students' knowledge of U.S. history and civics, it seemed to fit squarely with its traditional public service mission.

But an emphasis by corporation officials on how corporate investors could profit from the project has provoked controversy about the role commercial interests will play in the initiative and hints at new areas of conflict in public broadcasting's reliance on private-sector support.

Nazi reminders in Gaza?
By Jeff Jacoby, Globe Columnist  |  July 31, 2005

A READER e-mails a link to a news item from Gaza, where some Jewish residents have ''tattooed" their national ID numbers on their arms, Auschwitz-style -- a bitter gesture of protest against their forthcoming expulsion. My correspondent's comment is blunt. ''Misusing Holocaust language and imagery," she writes. ''Utterly disgusting -- makes me have less sympathy for them."

...Let's be clear: You don't have to support disengagement to agree that the Nazi-talk is grotesque. The Israeli army is not the Gestapo. The peaceful Jewish residents who will be forced from the homes and land they love are not being sent to gas chambers. Sharon's plan may be delusional -- instead of enabling Israelis to ''disengage" from Palestinian violence, it will bring them more of it, and in deadlier forms -- but it isn't the Final Solution.

And yet . . .

And yet there is no getting around the fact that Israel is about to become the first modern, Western nation in more than 60 years to forcibly uproot a whole population -- men, women, children, babies -- solely because they are Jews. There is no getting around the fact that the forthcoming expulsions are rooted in the belief that any future Palestinian state must be Judenrein -- emptied of its Jews.

Let us disengage from specific ethnic labels for a moment.

At State, Rice Takes Control of Diplomacy
Secretary Summons 'Practical Idealism'
By Robin Wright and Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, July 31, 2005; Page A01

Three weeks after taking office, Condoleezza Rice hosted Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and their Japanese counterparts at the State Department. When Rumsfeld began to speak, Rice gently cut him off. The message was clear: I'll take the lead, Don. Both Japanese and U.S. officials noted the decisive nudge.

Now six months on the job, Rice has clearly wrested control of U.S. foreign policy. The once heavy-handed Defense Department still weighs in, but Rice wins most battles -- in strong contrast to her predecessor, Colin L. Powell. White House staff is consulted, but Rice designed the distinctive framework for the administration's second-term foreign policy.

By yielding without question (as opposed to after questions, as General Powell did), it seems she is given a freer hand than her predecessor. Though I'm still wondering how she's escaped any responsibility for the mess in Iraq when she was specifically placed in command of stabilizing the place. Goes to show he skills as a diplomat, I guess.

Quote of note:

Created as counterpoints to large, well-established medical organizations whose work is subject to rigorous review and who assert no political agenda, the tiny think tanks with names often mimicking those of established medical authorities have sought to dispute the notion of a medical consensus on social issues such as gay rights, the right to die, abortion, and birth control.

Part of the reason I've been going on and on about getting caught up in words instead of meaning, definitions instead of indications, is that it's left us as a society vulnerable to manipulations by organizations like The Center for Equal Opportunity, The Center for the Study of Popular Culture and The American College of Pediatricians and the Center for Consumer Freedom. Announcements led by such names sound much more portentious than saying they represent the opinions of these thirty or so rich guys.

Beliefs drive research agenda of new think tanks
Study on gay adoption disputed by specialists
By Michael Kranish, Globe Staff  |  July 31, 2005

Quote of note:

...theft has been growing so fast that retailers are only now recognizing the role that organized crime is playing in the industry's growing losses.

Retail Gangs: A New Breed of Thieves
Stores Seek Better Tools to Defend Against Organized Shoplifting
By Margaret Webb Pressler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, July 31, 2005; Page A01

At CVS, the diabetic test strips and the perfume are now behind locked glass cabinets, with a bell to ring for service. Nearly all over-the-counter medicines are behind plexiglass panels that customers must reach over to get their Advil or Pepcid. And most razors and refills are in clunky, noise-making dispensers that won't let you put back what you take out.

Quote of note:

Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns was going to pressure Tashkent to allow an international investigation into the Andijan protests, which human rights groups and three US senators who met with eyewitnesses said killed about 500 people. Burns was also going to warn the government, one of the most authoritarian in the Islamic world, to open up politically -- or risk the kind of upheavals witnessed recently in Ukraine, Georgia, and Kyrgyzstan, US officials said.

Karimov has balked at an international probe. As US pressure mounted, he cut off US night flights and some cargo flights, forcing Washington to move search-and-rescue operations and some cargo flights to Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan and Manas Air Base in Kyrgyzstan.

US evicted from Uzbek air base
Military used hub for key missions in Afghanistan
By Washington Post  |  July 31, 2005

Bush, after exam, is called 'fit for duty'

BETHESDA -- President Bush was pronounced ''fit for duty" yesterday, after an annual checkup found that the 59-year-old commander in chief, an avid mountain bike rider, has lost 8 pounds since his last physical exam in December. ''I'm feeling pretty good," Bush said as he left the National Naval Medical Center.

via The All Spin Zone

Of course, it's Friday, and we're just now learning about it:

A young, pregnant, single mom from South Philadelphia is missing and police say she could be in danger.

No one has seen Latoyia Figueroa (right), 24, since Monday, when she didn't pick up her seven-year-old daughter from day care...

Dammit. Too bad she wasn't scheduled to get married this weekend.

Not that it would have made any difference, anyway. Latoyia Figueroa doesn't fit the CNN or Fox profile of a missing someone that matters.