An articulate Michael Ross, demonstrating a detailed knowledge of state and federal law, tried to convince a Superior Court judge Thursday that he is mentally competent and should be allowed to die as scheduled on Jan. 26.

[edit]

He told Judge Patrick Clifford he believes that 20 years was long enough for the appeals process, and said he did not want to bring further pain to the victims' families.

[edit]

The hearing follows a motion by Ross' former public defenders, who are seeking to intervene in the case against Ross' wishes. The two public defenders claim Ross is incompetent and the lethal injection would amount to "state-assisted suicide."

[edit]

Although Ross, a former insurance agent and Cornell University graduate, has indicated that he does not want to pursue more appeals, several organizations have mounted challenges in an attempt to stop the execution.

The Connecticut Civil Liberties Union and the Connecticut Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty have hired lobbyists, are setting up a Web site and are scheduling meetings across the state in an attempt to rally support for the abolishment of capital punishment.

A rally is planned at noon Friday at the state Capitol to protest the death penalty.

The concerns expressed are being addressed, and that is we expect our troops to have the best possible equipment. And if I were a soldier overseas wanting to defend my country, I'd want to ask the Secretary of Defense the same question, and that is, are we getting the best we can get us?

Now why do we soldiers have to dig through local landfills for pieces of scrap metal and compromise ballistic glass to up-armor our vehicles and why don't we have those resources readily available to us?

[edit]

Our vehicles are not armored. We're digging pieces of rusted scrap metal and compromised ballistic glass that's already been shot up, dropped, busted, picking the best out of this scrap to put on our vehicles to take into combat. We do not have proper armament vehicles to carry with us north.

It's not true that the potency of a man decreases if he has a tough physical training regime every day. I can tell you that from my own experiences. When I get back home every day I am my wife's superhero in bed.

* * *

I would always go for a muscular woman rather than for a skinny one but on one condition - her brains have to be as developed as her muscles.

Inspector: What is your profession?
Cloggie: I fuck horses.
(Pause)
Inspector (with furrowed brow): Pardon?
Cloggie (happily): Exactly!

... President Bush promised Thursday he would not raise payroll taxes to help pay for overhauling Social Security.

... "The problem is America is getting older and that there are fewer people to pay into the system to support a baby boomer generation which is about to retire," the president said.

... the program is facing "unfunded liabilities of about $11 trillion," the president added, noting he's suggested a new way to help shore up its funds.

"I think it's vital to consider allowing younger workers, on a voluntary basis, to set aside some of their own payroll tax in personal accounts as part of a comprehensive solution to dealing with the Social Security issue," Bush said.

The Problem

"... there are fewer people to pay into the system ..."

The Solution

Allow younger workers to set up personal accounts instead of paying into the system.

HANNITY: I'm just beginning to see a pattern here. I see a lot of the left attacking Condoleezza Rice. I see when -- when Justice Janice Brown, an African-American woman, when the president wants to appoint her, Democrats oppose her. Democrats opposing Miguel Estrada. Democrats attacking Condi Rice, Democrats attacking Clarence Thomas.

NOVAK: He said he could not support Justice Clarence Thomas' confirmation if nominated for chief justice, calling Justice Thomas an embarrassment who writes poorly. But Reid said he could back Justice Antonin Scalia for chief justice. Now, since Thomas and Scalia are both conservatives and agree on most everything, why the difference? The implication is that Thomas is a black man who is not smart enough, while Scalia is a white man who is.

The deal is that the Dems will protect blacks from racism and blacks will give their political support to Walter Mondale, Michael Dukakis, John Kerry and the like. But the most blatant racism in America today comes from Democrats and is directed against black politicians and public servants who opt out of this arrangement.

In April and May 1994, for example, as the genocide unfolded in Rwanda, Cabinet-level national security officials were focused on crises in Haiti and the Balkans.

The magnitude of the killings was not immediately apparent; and the logistical and political challenges in mounting a rescue operation in the wake of the Somalia failure were overwhelming.

Rwanda's `Sad, Sad, Sad' Self-Immolation; Free-for-All Slaughter Continues Among Tribes, Rebels, Army and Roving Gangs
Jennifer Parmelee
14 April 1994
The Washington Post

One week after Rwanda's president died in an apparent assassination, this Central African country has become a horrifying study in self-immolation. Terror has taken over the streets of Kigali, the capital, and the rolling green countryside where streams of refugees flee the tribal carnage that has claimed thousands of lives.

[edit]

No one could say how many casualties were added today to the estimated 20,000 people who have died in Rwanda's explosion of bloodletting since last Wednesday, when the presidents of Rwanda and Burundi were killed in a plane crash, presumably caused by a rocket attack. Red Cross officials said they had heard reports that one group of about 200 Tutsi civilians was slaughtered during the night in the Kigali area.

[U]nless both sides can be convinced to return to the peace process, a massive (hundreds of thousands of deaths) bloodbath will ensue that would likely spill over into Burundi.

It appears that, in addition to the random massacre of Tutsis by Hutu militias and individuals, there is an organized, parallel effort of genocide being implemented by the Army to destroy the leadership of the Tutsi community. The original intent was to kill only the political elite supporting reconciliation; however, the government lost control of the militias and the massacre spread liked wildfire. It continues to rage out of control.

... Congress cannot and should not continue to spend our money paying dues to an organization that will not open its records to our elected officials who are seeking to investigate numerous reports of corruption ...

If the United Nations refuses to open its financial records to our congressional investigators, the United States should suspend payment of part of its annual dues as a punishment for the United Nations’ intransigence.

The United States is again struggling to pay its dues at the United Nations and dozens of other international organizations.

... The United States had fallen hundreds of millions of dollars behind in its U.N. dues in the 1990s. ... An agreement was reached in December 2000 to reduce the U.S. share of the operating and peacekeeping budgets.

'''The (U.S.-run) former Coalition Provisional Authority, which is now being accused of misspending hundreds of millions of dollars in Iraq's oil revenues, did not think it fit to pay the country's U.N. dues even while it was pleading for U.N. assistance to help the reconstruction of Iraq."

The election of 2004 will be seen historically as the beginning of a dramatic reshaping of the techniques, methods and tactics of American politics.

This year, the nation’s political process was turned upside down as the elites lost power and the masses of average voters gained it.

… The way a handful of Swift boat Vietnam veterans with only a few hundred thousand dollars among them were able to defeat the entire propaganda apparatus of the Democratic Party and nullify the effect of a four-day national convention … is another example of the emerging people power.

And then there were the bloggers. Every week, every day, everybody got first a few and then a deluge of blogs from friends and family about the election.

… these informal, unpaid, unedited, unsanctioned expressions of opinion … came to dominate the dialogue of 2004.

Bad weather Wednesday forced the military to scrub the first full flight test of its national missile defense system in nearly two years.

"It is just heavy cloud cover," Rick Lehner, a spokesman for the Missile Defense Agency, said of conditions Wednesday evening off the Alaskan coast.

A gunman charged onstage at a packed nightclub and opened fire on the band and the crowd, killing top heavy metal guitarist "Dimebag" Darrell Abbott and three other people before a police officer shot him to death, authorities and witnesses said.

[edit]

Damageplan had just begun their first song at the Alrosa Villa when the man opened fire, first targeting Abbott, shooting him multiple times at point-blank range, a witness said.

Abbott, 38, one of metal's top guitarists, and his brother, Damageplan drummer Vinnie Paul Abbott, were original members of Grammy-nominated thrash rock pioneers Pantera, one of the most popular metal bands of the early 1990s.

In any case, the current-account [trade] deficit cannot be corrected by a fall in the dollar alone: domestic saving also needs to rise. The best way would be for the government to cut its budget deficit.

If, on the other hand, the government fails to cut its budget deficit, the dollar will fall more sharply and bond yields will rise. America's housing bubble might then burst and consumer spending would certainly slow sharply. That combination would reduce the external [trade] deficit, but only at the cost of a deep recession.

1. Nurses (79 percent)
2. Druggists, pharmacists (72 percent)
3. Military officers (72 percent)
4. Medical doctors (67 percent)
5. Police officers (60 percent)
6. Clergy (56 percent)
7. Judges (53 percent)
8. Day care providers (49 percent)
9. Bankers (36 percent)
10. Auto mechanics (26 percent)
11. Local officeholders (26 percent)
12. Nursing home operators (24 percent)
13. State officeholders (24 percent)
14. TV reporters (23 percent)
15. Newspaper reporters (21 percent)
16. Business executives (20 percent)
17. Lawyers (18 percent)
18. Congressmen (10 percent)
19. Advertising practitioners (10 percent)
20. Car salesmen (9 percent)

It would not, however, be an ideological "wash" if Rehnquist were replaced by Scalia, Thomas, or someone like them. While Rehnquist is indeed a very conservative Chief Justice, Scalia and Thomas are in some regards even further to the right than Rehnquist and have sometimes staked out more extreme positions on states' rights and other issues than even Rehnquist has been willing to support.

For example, Rehnquist wrote the Court's 6-3 opinion in Nevada Department of Human Resources v. Hibbs (2003), rejecting the state of Nevada's claim that state employees could not sue the state for money damages for violating the Family and Medical Leave Act. Justices Scalia and Thomas (and Kennedy) dissented. Just two more votes in accordance with the Scalia-Thomas position would not only have undermined the Family and Medical Leave Act, but extended even further the Court's recent "states' rights" rulings, which have severely limited the power of Congress to protect the rights of individual Americans.

Scalia and Thomas were also in dissent in two other important cases in which Rehnquist wrote the majority opinion: Dickerson v. United States, which upheld Miranda's requirement that criminal suspects be notified of their rights, and Locke v. Davey, in which Scalia and Thomas as the only dissenters would have forced states that subsidize secular college studies to also subsidize the studies of students preparing for the ministry.

So it is, in fact, possible to move the Court further to the right while replacing Rehnquist, and it would be destructive to do so, especially if he would be replaced by a younger nominee likely to serve for three decades or more.

In a farewell assessment of Iraq's security and political situation, the CIA's senior officer there wrote that a stronger government and economy are necessary to avoid descent into wider violence, a U.S. official said yesterday.

The Sunni population must take part in Iraq's Jan. 30 election, the officer wrote in a mixed review of the situation, according to the official.

[The CIA chief’s cable] has warned that the situation in Iraq is deteriorating and may not rebound any time soon, according to government officials.

… the officials described the station chief's cable in particular as an unvarnished assessment of the difficulties ahead in Iraq. They said it warned that the security situation was likely to get worse, including more violence and sectarian clashes, unless there were marked improvements soon on the part of the Iraqi government, in terms of its ability to assert authority and to build the economy.

Together, the [CIA cable and a separate appraisal] … were much more pessimistic than the public picture being offered by the Bush administration before the elections scheduled for Iraq next month, the officials said.

The outgoing U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, John Danforth, used highly undiplomatic language in describing what he regards as the Assembly's insensitivity to the suffering in Darfur, where well over 1 million black Africans have been uprooted from their homes by government-backed Arab militias.

"The message from the General Assembly is very simple, and it is: You may be suffering, but we can't be bothered," Danforth said.

At another point, he said persistent failures of U.N. members "to present a unified front against well-documented atrocities would represent nothing less than the complete breakdown of the U.N.'s deliberative bodies related to human rights. "

A frustrated John Danforth said: "We're getting nowhere." He said Sudan's government, its militia and the rebels involved in Darfur "sign agreements which apparently mean nothing at all."

An American T-shirt company has a solution for their fellow citizens who want to vacation in Europe without having to answer questions about U.S. politics -- pose as Canadians.

For $24.95, T-shirtKing.com offers the "Go Canadian" package, full of just the kind of things an American traveler needs to leave their country and its politics behind. There's a Canadian flag T-shirt, a Canadian flag lapel pin and a Canadian patch for luggage or a backpack. There's also a quick reference guide -- "How to Speak Canadian, Eh?" -- on answering questions about Canada.

It's the brainchild of employees at the Mountainair, New Mexico-based company known for novelty T-shirts it sells worldwide on the Internet.

The "Go Canadian" idea sprouted after one of [T-shirtKing.com's employees] heard of someone being harassed about U.S. politics during a recent overseas trip.

[Robert Novak] and his colleagues on CNN's "The Capital Gang" were squabbling over whether CBS should have run a story on President George W. Bush's National Guard service, a story which relied on documents whose authenticity had come into question. Novak -- the show's resident curmudgeon, outfitted with a three-piece suit and permanently arched eyebrow -- delivered his verdict.

"I'd like CBS, at this point, to say where they got those documents from," he growled. "I think they should say where they got these documents because I thought it was a very poor job of reporting by CBS."

Resident liberal Al Hunt jumped in to clarify. "Robert Novak," he asked, "you're saying CBS should reveal its source?"

When Novak replied that he was, Hunt pressed him further.

"You think reporters ought to reveal sources?" In a flash, Novak realized he had made a mistake; he began to backtrack.

"No, no, wait a minute," he said. "I'm just saying in that case." So in some cases, Hunt continued, reporters should reveal their sources – but not in all cases? "That's right," said Novak.

What Novak's fellow panelists on "The Capital Gang" knew that day, but most of the show's viewers probably didn't, was that much of Washington has spent the better part of a year waiting for Novak to reveal a source of his own.

During the summer of 2003, someone in the Bush White House decided to extract a pound of flesh from former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, a critic of the administration's rationale for the Iraq war, by revealing to members of the press that Wilson's wife was an undercover CIA agent. And though the leak was peddled to several journalists, only one was willing to actually print it: Robert Novak.

In short, this "reform" bill places about 80 percent of the entity that's supposedly being reformed outside the control of the official—the new national intelligence director—who is supposedly the reform's centerpiece.

[edit]

However, whether reform is a good idea or not, what the Congress is about to wreak is not reform in any meaningful sense. There will be a director of national intelligence. But the post will likely be a figurehead, at best someone like the chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, at worst a thin new layer of bureaucracy, and in any case nothing like the locus of decision-making and responsibility that the 9/11 commission had in mind.

1. My opposition to the Iraq War reflects my approval of the policies favored by radical Muslim fundamentalists, just as my parents' opposition to the Vietnam War expressed their support for Soviet totalitarianism.
   
2. I adamantly oppose any action that would increase the security of American citizens and/or U.S. territory.
3. I detest the military, all who serve in it, and all who have ever served in it with a visceral loathing I can barely contain.
4. I hardly noticed 9/11 and think that we pretty much had it coming anyway.

But Joe Glover, president of the Virginia-based Family Policy Network, says something is very wrong. Glover says homosexual publications have outed at least six members of [Senator George Allen's] office as homosexuals. He says one homosexual activist even went so far as to say Allen had the "gayest office on Capitol Hill."

Pro-family conservatives, he says, need to make sure Senator Allen hears their voices. "If someone is going to run the day-to-day operations for the Republican apparatus to elect U.S. senators across the country, then dog-gone-it, it better not be somebody who practices a lifestyle that is diametrically opposed to the evangelical Christian base that delivered George W. Bush and the Republicans in the Senate the victory they saw in November," he says.

Princess Maxima's cousin, pole dancer Laura Vina, has decided to stay in the Netherlands after a Friday performance in Amsterdam at the Ex Porn Star party. Vina, 22, works as a professional stripper and pole dancer in Buenos Aires. Her grandmother is a sister of the grandmother of Argentine Princess Maxima, who is married to Dutch Crown Prince Willem-Alexander. Vina claims both she and Maxima met several times as children, but the Government Information Service (RVD) has denied this. For the next two weeks, Vina will be stripping for viewers over the internet and can be seen daily from 8pm to 9pm on a website operated by the Ex Porn Star organisation.

George W. Bush
Commander In Chief

George W. Bush
Commander In Chief
Seriously .... We Mean It

Next to appropriations earmarks, the parochial lifeblood of Congress just might be commemorations, remembrances and recognitions. They provide every Member with an opportunity to affix the Congressional seal to a favorite group, cause, team, local interest, vegetable or whatever they wish.

There's only one small problem. For the past decade, House rules have prohibited them.

Of course, the prohibition hasn't stopped Members -- up to and including Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) from indulging themselves. There's been National Preparedness Month. National Investors' Day. National Donor Day ... (and) dozens, even hundreds, of others in the 108th Congress alone.

... each resolution honoring those days and months violates the spirit, if not the letter, of a House rule enacted by the new GOP majority in 1995 that remains in force .... the rule was designed to eliminate some of the frivolous and wasteful activity that the insurgent Republicans believed hamstrung the chamber under decades of Democratic rule.

... "The Parliamentarians are not supposed to let you introduce [such resolutions or commemorations]," (former Rules Committee staff director Don) Wolfensberger said, adding that "the Parliamentarian doesn't have final control. The Speaker makes the ultimate call as to whether it can be introduced."

... Although it wasn't part of the "Contract with America," the impetus behind the commemorations ban was very much a part of the same package of reforms instigated by the Republicans who took over the House (in 1995) after 40 years of Democratic rule.

... Mr. Tauzin's detractors described him as an unqualified, overgrown frat boy trying to glide into Congress on his father's name ...

... Mr. Bush's detractors described him as an unqualified, overgrown frat boy trying to glide into the White House on his father's name ...

The redesigned (Planned Parenthood) card features the same slogan as previous years. This year's card features bubblegum pink snowflakes on the outside along with the infamous tagline.

… "In its continual attempt to 'normalize' abortion, Planned Parenthood has once again chosen to offend the Christian community by releasing the latest edition of its 'Choice on Earth' holiday cards," said Jim Sedlak, executive director of STOPP, a group that monitors Planned Parenthood.

No one (in Chinese schools) learns that perhaps 30 million people died from famine because of catastrophic decisions made in the 1950's, during the Great Leap Forward, by the founder of Communist China, Mao Zedong.

... Asked why Chinese textbooks do not mention such matters as Tibet's claim to independence at the time Communist troops invaded, Ren Penjie, editor of a history education magazine in Xian, said: "These are still matters of controversy. What we present to children are less controversial facts, which are easier to explain."

One 1998 textbook that alludes to the (Tiananmen) demonstrations calls them a "storm" created by the failure of leaders to stop the spread of "bourgeois liberalism," adding vaguely that "the Central Committee took action in time and restored calm."

The most recent edition of the same textbook is vaguer still, speaking only of thoughts fanned by a small number of people whose aim was to overthrow the Communist Party, with no mention of the lethal aftermath.

Asked if transition costs, estimated at between $1 trillion to $2 trillion, would be financed by government borrowing, he added: "That's what you're looking at doing as part of the transition to a better Social Security system."

[edit]

McClellan countered: "The Social Security system is unsustainable. It needs to be fixed."

He said it would cost $10 trillion "if we do nothing... It will lead to either massive tax increases or massive benefit cuts for younger workers."

[It is estimated that] the trust fund will run out in 2052. The system won't become "bankrupt" at that point; even after the trust fund is gone, Social Security revenues will cover 81 percent of the promised benefits. Still, there is a long-run financing problem.

But it's a problem of modest size. The report finds that extending the life of the trust fund into the 22nd century, with no change in benefits, would require additional revenues equal to only 0.54 percent of G.D.P. That's less than 3 percent of federal spending - less than we're currently spending in Iraq. And it's only about one-quarter of the revenue lost each year because of President Bush's tax cuts - roughly equal to the fraction of those cuts that goes to people with incomes over $500,000 a year.

Given these numbers, it's not at all hard to come up with fiscal packages that would secure the retirement program, with no major changes, for generations to come.

It's true that the federal government as a whole faces a very large financial shortfall. That shortfall, however, has much more to do with tax cuts - cuts that Mr. Bush nonetheless insists on making permanent - than it does with Social Security.

The Supreme Court should not have had to hear the case of Thomas Joe Miller-El once, let alone twice. But yesterday the court for the second time held oral arguments in a capital case that ought to embarrass even Texas, with its unrivaled enthusiasm for executions.

... Nearly two years ago, the Supreme Court instructed a lower appeals court to seriously examine evidence of racial bias in the jury's selection. The high court's message should have been clear when it expressed suspicion that "the State sought to exclude African-Americans from the jury." But after that ruling, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit again averted its gaze from substantial evidence of discrimination, treating the case with what seems like willful disregard for the high court's meaning.

The backdrop of this case is Dallas's ugly history of keeping blacks out of the jury box. ... the Dallas Morning News reported that, in 100 cases studied, prosecutors had eliminated 92 percent of African Americans using peremptory strikes, a device for removing jurors who would otherwise be qualified.

The manipulations in Mr. Miller-El's case were not subtle. Prosecutors exploited rules to move potential African American jurors out of contention; of 11 who got past that barrier and were qualified to serve on the jury, 10 were struck by peremptory challenge.

declared that lethal injection is "too quick. They don't feel the pain ... What I call punishment is back to the old Indian days ... Pour some honey on them and stake them out over an ant bed.

... as the Supreme Court noted in its last opinion, prospective black jurors were questioned differently from others.

Amazingly, both the Texas court system and the 5th Circuit judges have consistently approved the prosecutors' conduct. In the last go-round, the 5th Circuit declined even to hear the case, contending that reasonable judges could not disagree on the subject.

After eight Supreme Court justices disagreed and ordered the lower court to consider the merits of Mr. Miller-El's claims, the lower court rejected them -- using passages lifted nearly verbatim from Justice Clarence Thomas's lone dissent.

This case ... also poses the question of whether the Supreme Court will allow a lower tribunal -- keen to keep the machinery of death humming -- to all but openly defy it. The answer must be no.

Mr. Miller-El, a black man, was convicted of killing a clerk at a Holiday Inn in Dallas in 1985. Although the case is now in a new procedural stance, the underlying question is the same: did Texas prosecutors violate Mr. Miller-El's constitutional rights by deliberately excluding black jurors from his 1985 murder trial on the basis of their race?

The prosecution struck 10 of 11 black jurors; six of those strikes are now in dispute. Mr. Waxman, Mr. Miller-El's lawyer, argued in the first round and again on Monday that in removing black jurors from a black defendant's trial, the prosecution used a double standard, accepting white jurors while striking blacks who expressed equivalently ambiguous sentiments on whether they could impose the death penalty.

When Justice Antonin Scalia, who did an energetic job of reinforcing the state's argument at every turn, told Mr. Waxman that the state had an explanation for each juror and that "a buckshot attack" on the jury selection "has to be examined pellet by pellet"

[edit]

The state's insistence that there was a meaningful difference in potential jurors' answers on their attitude toward the death penalty is crucial to its defense of what occurred during jury selection. Under the Supreme Court's 1986 decision in Batson v. Kentucky, the use of peremptory challenges to shape a jury on a basis that appears to be racial is presumed unconstitutional unless the prosecution can provide a reason unrelated to race. Qualms about the death penalty would be an acceptable reason unless black and white jurors were held to different standards.

While Mr. Miller-El's case was tried shortly before the Supreme Court issued the Batson decision, the ruling applies to him retroactively. Nonetheless, the timeline proved something of a trap for Ms. Bunn and her vocal ally, Justice Scalia.

Several justices questioned the prosecution's practice of using cards to note the race of potential jurors in the pool. Justice Scalia provided a potential explanation for a practice that these justices found troubling. "Maybe the prosecution didn't want to come up with an all-white jury for fear it would be challenged," he said.

Ms. Bunn readily agreed. "It was necessary to keep track, as Justice Scalia noted, to be certain that you don't run afoul of Batson," she said.

Justice John Paul Stevens said, "Batson hadn't been decided yet."

Accenture just landed the $13 million contract with Wisconsin's State Elections Board. State employees say it's another example of work they should be doing.

"We have Enron's bookkeeper counting our votes," said state employee Mark Davis. "That does not sound like democracy to me."

Accenture is a branch of Arthur Andersen, the accounting firm that oversaw Enron's demise. Accenture is already under fire in Florida over voter registration lists that wrongly excluded some black voters.

Wisconsin Democracy Campaign Executive Director Mike McCabe says the whole idea doesn't make sense.

"We're breeding mistrust of our elections in our state," said McCabe. "And it's going to cost taxpayers more to do it this way."

From the days when it was called Andersen Consulting, Accenture has drawn fire for running up prices on government contracts and missing deadlines. Contracts in Texas, Virginia, Nebraska and Canada cost those governments millions more than expected, according to the Polaris Institute, which creates profiles on companies that do business with government.

The federal Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating Accenture for a possible violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, the U.S. law banning bribery of foreign officials. Accenture announced the investigation last week, saying it involved operations in the Middle East.

... (Florida Congressman Kendrick) Meek said the state could have found a company without "such a history of wrong-doing and sloppy work."

Math + test = trouble for US economy

For a nation committed to preparing students for 21st century jobs, the results of the first-of-its-kind study of how well teenagers can apply math skills to real-life problems is sobering.

American 15-year-olds rank well below those in most other industrialized countries in mathematics literacy and problem solving, according to a survey released Monday.

[edit]

These results track findings that most US high school students don't know enough mathematics to do well in college courses or the work force. "Only 40 percent of high school graduates are prepared to earn a C or higher in a college level course, and these are also the same skills needed for the workplace," says Ken Gullette, a spokesman for ACT Inc. in Iowa City, a college entrance exam.

An amendment to the 3,000-page budget bill before the House of Representatives would punish countries, even close allies in the war on terrorism, that have joined the International Criminal Court and have declined to promise they would not send American citizens to the court without US permission.

Since 2002, the US government has withheld military aid from countries that refused to sign such a bilateral agreement. But the new amendment in this year's budget bill goes a step further, revoking other nonmilitary assistance to governments. The amendment targets an economic support fund designed to foster democracy and human rights around the world, as well as promote the rule of law in Muslim countries to bolster counterterrorism efforts.

Representative Tom DeLay, the House majority leader, insisted the amendment protected US soldiers from UN Secretary General "Kofi Annan's kangaroo court."

Calling the tribunal "a shady amalgam of every bad idea ever cooked up for world government," DeLay said the court "still asserts jurisdiction over the American people, including American soldiers fighting the war on terror and still salivates at the prospect of prosecuting one of us for anything the UN does not like."

Representative Jim Kolbe of Arizona, opposed the amendment, saying it applies "a very, very heavy hand to the problem."

"At a time when we are fighting the war on terrorism, reducing this tool of diplomatic influence is not a good idea," Kolbe said.

Rwanda was a failure at almost every level, but certainly it was a failure of the United Nations. But let us be clear what we mean by that. It was the major powers - the United States, Britain, France - that determined the exact nature of the peacekeeping mission. It was they who insisted that the force stay neutral. (France's actions were even less edifying, since it was reportedly a big supplier of the Hutu Army.) The United Nations failed in Rwanda because we failed.

This logic holds even in the messy scandal over the Oil-for-Food Program, a badly managed affair surrounded by corruption. But who designed the Oil-for-Food Program? The United States and Britain. They wrote the rules that allowed Saddam Hussein to choose his trading partners, banks and consultants. They vetted every one of the 30,000 contracts that passed through the program. They held up 5,000 over concerns about materials that could be used for weapons of mass destruction, but not one over concerns about corruption. Saddam's major revenues actually came from smuggling, which was an activity the United Nations was not mandated to stop. The only ones who could have stopped it were the ones with military force in the region - the United States and Britain. The truth is that Washington (during both the Clinton and the Bush years) cared little about Iraq's corruption. It cared only about its weapons.

"In a sense, things got better after the peacekeepers left. People realized that no one was going to help them and took matters into their own hands."

1. Not all Germans drive like Bostonians on acid. Some drive like Bostonians on speed.
2. Corollary to the foregoing: if you are driving in Germany with your spouse and children, sedate everyone in the car. Including yourself.
3. There is nothing quite like walking in a Weinachtsmarkt (outdoor Christmas market) on a cold day and warming yourself up with glühwein (literally, "glow wine") and wurst.
4. If it's really cold and your kids don't like sausage, they may not appreciate point #3.
5. People who think that DVD players in the back seats of cars are decadent don't have kids.
6. Germans should really stop using six-pointed stars in their Christmas motifs, particularly when the stars are yellow. I'm just saying.
7. Dutch and German are similar, except when you need them to be.
8. The German title for the movie "The Incredibles" is "Die Unglaublichen." The Dutch title is "The Incredibles" (even for the dubbed version). The movie opened two weeks earlier in the Netherlands than in Germany. Did it really take Disney two weeks to translate two words?
9. Mel Brooks can be really annoying when he's in your head all weekend saying: "Don't be stupid/Be a smartie/Come and join the/Nazi Party" (extra points to those who know why I was susceptible to this affliction).

66. The introduction to the [California Dep't of Education] History-Social Science Content Standards for Grade Five state: "This course focuses on one of the most remarkable stories in history: the creation of a new nation...founded on the Judeo-Christian heritage...."

67. This nation was founded on the Judeo-Christian heritage.

Bush attends church, goes biking

December 5, 2004
cnn.com

Washington (AP) -- President Bush attended a church service Sunday and then headed out on his mountain bike to ride in crisp, cool weather, getting in some exercise before attending a star-studded event at the Kennedy Center.

"Good morning everybody," Bush exclaimed to onlookers as he left the worship service at St. John's Episcopal Church, just across Lafayette Park from the White House. "Great to see ya."

Before church, the president, clad in a tan cowboy hat, moseyed around the Rose Garden area, his dog, Barney, in tow. Several visitors joined the president and first lady in the brief motorcade to church. Afterward, Bush returned to the White House, changed clothes and headed to Beltsville, Maryland, near Washington, to ride his bike on the grounds of a Secret Service training facility.

Proponents see several advantages in the plan. But privacy advocates are worried, especially by a clause that allows the firms to negotiate installment payments of taxes owed. Since repayment could stretch over five years, collectors will probably have to ask taxpayers for numerous financial details to figure out how much they can afford to pay.

That's troubling because private firms already doing business with the IRS don't exactly have a stellar record in safeguarding taxpayer data. A review by the Treasury's Inspector General of more than 900 IRS contracts - obtained by a Freedom of Information Act request this past spring - stated that "contractor's employees committed numerous security violations" that placed "taxpayer data at risk" and that in some cases, "contractors blatantly circumvented IRS policies and procedures" even when told about it.

In 1996, the IRS tried a small experiment using private firms to collect back taxes. It failed. The IRS spent as much as it collected. But if Congress gave the IRS sufficient funds to pursue the $350 billion or so that taxpayers should pay but haven't, the IRS would collect much more money at lower cost than private debt collectors could - and significantly reduce the budget deficit, argues Donald Alexander, an IRS commissioner during the 1970s.

If the government could collect that conservative estimate of $300 billion lost to evasion, then Congress could exempt from taxes the half of Americans who earn less than $532 a week and give tax cuts averaging $4,000 to the rest of the taxpayers.

Statewide Recount Shows Alabama's Segregation Amendment Failed

MONTGOMERY, Ala. -- Unofficial totals from a statewide election recount show that Amendment 2 failed by 1,766 votes. That's a margin of 0.13 percent.

The unofficial numbers are based on preliminary figures from the recount done by county election officials. Secretary of State Nancy Worley cautions that nothing will be official until next week. The original election totals had Amendment 2 losing by 1,850 votes out of nearly 1.4 million votes cast.

Amendment 2 would have removed segregation-era language from Alabama's constitution. That included language on segregated schools and poll taxes, as well as a provision saying there is no right to an education at public expense.