BunkBlog

Court has ruled against the broadcast flag, making many pieces of hardware legal again. Yay!

Gore to Get Lifetime Award for Internet

Nuff said.

Evolution on trial in Kansas

bq. The Kansas Board of Education has scheduled six days of courtroom-style hearings to begin Thursday in Topeka. More than two dozen witnesses will give testimony and be subject to cross-examination, with the majority expected to argue against teaching evolution.

C’mon! Are you guys serious up there? Nikki – tell me your neighbors aren’t all insane.

Anyone read the Crucible? I’m so embarassed to be in this country some days.

I think the most important thing to take away from this article is the following pair of sentences. Do you see a problem with the rationale for the ban?

Some members of Congress, citing the case of shoe-bomber Richard Reid, feared terrorists could use lighters to ignite bombs.
Reid tried unsuccessfully to use a match to ignite his bomb during a trans-Atlantic flight in 2001.

Although the headline says that Rudolph reveals his motives, it really doesn’t shed much light on things. How does attacking an abortion clinic strike a blow against the government? How does killing adults make you “pro-life” in any way? As Bill Hicks said, “It’s a basic kind of irony. Pro-lifers killing people.” And the Olympics? How is that going to shame the U.S. for its legalization of abortion?

For that matter, wouldn’t a protest against the legalization of abortion have made a lot more sense if it was sometime earlier than 1996? Roe v Wade was in 1973, dude!

Thanks to Guav for the proof of bizarre hypocrisy in the GOP today.
Congress is about to pass legislation to “save” the life of the permanent vegetable Terry Schiavo. Every doctor who has ever examined her in the past decade came to the conclusion that she, as a functioning human being, is gone. She is not alive except in a strictly mechanical definition. Yet Congress is going to pass a law that addresses her specifically. Bizarre enough.
The President cut off his vacation (one of thousands he seems to take since becoming the most overpaid chief executive in the history of this country) in order to be sure to be in Washington to sign this critical piece of legislation.
Just this past week, because of legislation that Governor Bush signed into law in Texas years ago, a baby died after being taken off life support. Unlike the Schiavo case, there is no family member begging for the baby to be allowed to die and other members begging for the baby to be kept alive. Now, this baby was born with a fatal disease, but even so – the doctors got to override the family’s wishes period. Nobody in Washington wanted to take up any special legislation for this child. What’s the difference? Are they still concerned with looking good in the swing state of Florida, but Texas will vote for the GOP even if they fielded Beelzebub for office?

CNN story confirming earlier studies that kids in “abstinence only” programs do not have lower rates of STDs than the norm. On the plus side, 88 percent of kids in “abstinence only” programs have premarital sex, compared to 99 percent of the rest.

“Kids who pledge abstinence are taught that any word that has ‘sex’ in it is considered a sexual activity,” said the president of the National Abstinence Clearinghouse. “Therefore oral sex is sex, and they are staying away.”

Yeah, you ask a teenager if he’s getting laid, and he’ll tell you the truth every time. Just like when you ask if he’s ever had beer or weed.

From the Daily Kos, a little information about the REAL ID Act (HR 418), which is a law that includes provisions for building roads and barriers around the San Ysidro border crossing into Tijuana.

SEC. 102. WAIVER OF LAWS NECESSARY FOR IMPROVEMENT OF BARRIERS AT BORDERS.
Section 102(c) of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 (8 U.S.C. 1103 note) is amended to read as follows:
`(c) Waiver-
`(1) IN GENERAL- Notwithstanding any other provision of law, the Secretary of Homeland Security shall have the authority to waive, and shall waive, all laws such Secretary, in such Secretary’s sole discretion, determines necessary to ensure expeditious construction of the barriers and roads under this section.
`(2) NO JUDICIAL REVIEW- Notwithstanding any other provision of law (statutory or nonstatutory), no court shall have jurisdiction–
`(A) to hear any cause or claim arising from any action undertaken, or any decision made, by the Secretary of Homeland Security pursuant to paragraph (1); or
`(B) to order compensatory, declaratory, injunctive, equitable, or any other relief for damage alleged to arise from any such action or decision.’.

Suspend ANY law and there is NO judicial review? Exactly why is it that we would wish to give the Secretary of Homeland Security more powers than the President? Even the leader of the executive branch has some oversight of his actions, yet this is proposing to give the DHS secretary carte blanche to do whatever he feels is necessary? Where are we going, and why are we in this handbasket?

This is an interesting piece about the origins of the neocons, which points to a disconnection (in my opinion) between the original neocons of the 70s and the group often labeled with that epithet today. Notice the folks generally called neocons in this administration never label themselves at all or align themselves publicly with any other group.

The President’s nominee to head the United Nations kind of hates international cooperation.

In an interview in 2000 on National Public Radio, Mr. Bolton told Juan Williams, “If I were redoing the Security Council today, I’d have one permanent member because that’s the real reflection of the distribution of power in the world.”

Yeah, great way to regain any sort of reasonable approach to foreign relations there.

US troops take shots at a vehicle driven by the Italian Secret Service, killing one of the agents that was escorting newly freed journalist Giuliana Sgrena to the airport.

Eason Jordan quit over his comments that suggested anything like this happens over there.

The Democrats introduced an amendment to a bill sponsored by shills for MBNA; the amendment would prevent poor military members from being screwed over by being forced into bankruptcy when they’re deployed and can’t handle their bills properly because they’re being shot at. The Republicans (wrapped in flags at the time, no doubt) shot the amendment down.

Way to support our troops.

Greenspan sounds U.S. deficit warning

bq. U.S. Federal Reserve Board chairman Alan Greenspan issued one of his toughest warnings yet to Congress yesterday about the danger of letting the country’s giant budget deficits persist, saying “the consequences for the U.S. economy of doing nothing could be severe.”

Well, that’s it. He’s gonna be fired soon. Nobody is allowed to speak ill of Republican deficits. Democratic deficits, those are evil. GOP debt, that’s a patriotic duty.

This is a good description of why I’m building a MythTV box this spring. Of course, it may be illegal to build one by the fall, so I’d better get on it. Maybe I’ll buy an HDTV card for future use, before they’re banned in the USA.

Go innovation!

Previous post on this topic is here.

Concho Online is live. Now, to get more contributors…

If you haven’t seen the Oscar-winning short film, “Ryan”, go see it now. Fantastic. Beautiful. Heartbreaking.

Our new Attorney General sure has his priorities straight. Like his predecessor, Gonzales is making indecency a priority. That worked so well for Ashcroft, who was so bent out of shape about dirty pictures that he completely ignored the whole, “stopping bad guys from blowing up buildings” part of his job. Good to see we’ll get more of the same from the new guy.

First it was Kyoto we backed out of, now it’s the Women’s Rights declaration of the UN. We helped to write both the Kyoto Treaty and the Women’s Rights Declaration; now we refuse to support either of them.

It’s a stupid move, and it’s an obvious grandstanding ploy, as the Declaration is a non-binding statement of principles, not a law or treaty. We can’t even say the right thing anymore?

The “doctor” has left the building.

Yet another major study of the world’s oceans has proven yet again something which many people with whom I work refuse to acknowledge: we are causing global warming.

“The debate about whether there is a global warming signal now is over, at least for rational people,” said Tim Barnett, of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California. “The models got it right. If a politician stands up and says the uncertainty is too great to believe these models, that is no longer tenable.”

Naturally, the luddites will continue to believe whatever they wish, much as they continue to disbelieve evolution is real. Wonder if they disbelieve the theory of gravity or germ theory as well?