Negroponte Had Denied Domestic Call Monitoring - ""I wouldn't call it domestic spying," he told reporters. "This is about international terrorism and telephone calls between people thought to be working for international terrorism and people here in the United States." Three days later, USA Today divulged details of the NSA's effort to log a majority of the telephone calls made within the United States since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks -- amassing the domestic call records of tens of millions of U.S. households and businesses in an attempt to sift them for clues about terrorist threats."
Bush to Campaign Against Criticism of NSA Wiretap Program - "The administration argues that the president has the constitutional authority to let intelligence officials listen in on international phone calls of Americans with suspected ties to terrorists."
Congress may make ISPs snoop on you - "A prominent Republican on Capitol Hill has prepared legislation that would rewrite Internet privacy rules by requiring that logs of Americans' online activities be stored, CNET News.com has learned."
Reform bill to double immigration - "The immigration reform bill that the Senate takes up today would more than double the flow of legal immigration into the United States each year and dramatically lower the skill level of those immigrants."
A government out of control - ""THEY HATE our freedoms,'' is one of President Bush's favored rallying cries in the war on terrorism. More and more, the question is becoming: Which cherished freedoms, precisely, is Bush referring to? His administration's apparent disrespect for what most of us would regard as one of the most fundamental freedoms of all -- a right to privacy -- raises deep concerns about the self-inflicted erosion of our way of life by wide-scale government tracking of phone calls in the name of fighting terrorism. Once again, Bush has suggested that law-abiding Americans have nothing to worry about. But he's wrong. Voices in both parties in Washington are rightly furious over this latest overstepping of governmental limits."
God's own party - "Now that the GOP has been transformed by the rise of the South, the trauma of terrorism and George W. Bush's conviction that God wanted him to be president, a deeper conclusion can be drawn: The Republican Party has become the first religious party in U.S. history."
Battle Cry for theocracy - "If you’ve been waiting until the Christian fascist movement started filling stadiums with young people and hyping them up to do battle in “God’s army” to get alarmed, wait no longer. ... They claim their religion and values are under attack but, amidst spectacular lightshows, hummers, Navy Seals, and military imagery on stage, it is Battle Cry that has declared war on everyone else! Ron Luce, Battle Cry’s leader and Teen Mania president and founder, makes clear this is not mere metaphor: “This is war. And Jesus invites us to get into the action, telling us that the violent -- the ‘forceful’ ones -- will lay hold of the kingdom."" -- And this is one reason why I loathe organized religion. Read the rest, it's disgusting.
Bible Classes In Public Schools? - "The buzz results mostly from "The Bible and Its Influence," a glossy high school textbook with substantial interfaith and academic endorsements. It's available for the coming school year, and some 800 high schools are currently considering the course."
In Western Europe - ""In many European countries -- Switzerland in particular -- sexual intercourse, at least from the age of 15 or 16 years, is considered acceptable and even part of normative adolescent behavior." Switzerland, he noted, has one of the world's lowest rates of abortion and teen pregnancy. Teens there, like those in Sweden and the Netherlands, have easy access to contraceptives, confidential health care and comprehensive sex education."
MySpace.com hosts wannabe terrorists - "Popular site provides fertile ground for recruitment, glorification of jihad."
McCain hates bloggers - "Then there's the idea that bloggers are all young; as commenters on ThinkProgress quickly pointed out, the latest surveys show that most are over thirty. But most importantly, what a way to alienate and irritate a whole segment of folks; clearly, McCain's performance shows that the man just doesn't give a hoot about the emerging power of citizen media."
Nev. Study Links Casino Smoke, DNA Damage - "Five years of research led by a University of Nevada, Reno department head in Reno and Las Vegas casinos have concluded there is a direct correlation between exposure to secondhand smoke in the workplace and damage to the employees' DNA. "The more they were exposed to environmental tobacco smoke, the more the DNA damage, and that's going to lead to a higher risk of heart disease and cancer down the road," said Chris Pritsos."
NZ firm makes bio-diesel from sewage in world first - "A New Zealand company has successfully turned sewage into modern-day gold. Marlborough-based Aquaflow Bionomic yesterday announced it had produced its first sample of bio-diesel fuel from algae in sewage ponds."
Baseball is about numbers, but whose? - "This relationship between players and numbers, so often romanticized, is now being stripped to its skeleton in a lawsuit with considerably wider ramifications. While the dispute focuses on fantasy baseball--in which millions of fans compete against one another by assembling rosters of real-life major leaguers with the best statistics--a real legal question has arisen: Who owns that connection of name and number when it is used for such a commercial purpose?"
Quote of the Day
"Welcome to the jungle, it gets worse here every day."
~ Guns 'n' Roses, (Welcome to the Jungle)
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