[Quote:]

In the latest twist in the debate over presidential powers, a Justice Department official suggested that in certain circumstances, the president might have the power to order the killing of terrorist suspects inside the United States. Steven Bradbury, acting head of the department’s Office of Legal Counsel, went to a closed-door Senate intelligence committee meeting last week to defend President George W. Bush’s surveillance program. During the briefing, said administration and Capitol Hill officials (who declined to be identified because the session was private), California Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein asked Bradbury questions about the extent of presidential powers to fight Al Qaeda; could Bush, for instance, order the killing of a Qaeda suspect known to be on U.S. soil? Bradbury replied that he believed Bush could indeed do this, at least in certain circumstances.

So the President has the sole authority to sentence Americans to the death penalty without a trial. Hmm.

I guess the determination of whether you’re a terrorist will depend on ‘whether they want to kill you or not’. This administration is great at circular logic.

And I’m glad I’m not a vegan…

If you want to know how a ship can end up looking like that, follow this link for more pictures…

Milton Friedman, 93, was awarded the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1976. His monetarist and laissez-faire ideas have been profoundly influential in the past several decades with leading political figures from Margaret Thatcher to Ronald Reagan. In late November, NPQ editor Nathan Gardels spoke with Friedman at his hilltop San Francisco apartment with panoramic views across the San Francisco Bay to the Golden Gate Bridge.

[Quote:]

Germany’s problem, in part, is that it went into the euro at the wrong exchange rate that overvalued the deutsche mark. So you have a situation in the eurozone where Ireland has inflation and rapid expansion while Germany and France have stalled and had the difficulties of adjusting.

The euro is going to be a big source of problems, not a source of help. The euro has no precedent. To the best of my knowledge, there has never been a monetary union, putting out a fiat currency, composed of independent states.

There have been unions based on gold or silver, but not on fiat money—money tempted to inflate—put out by politically independent entities.

At the moment, of course, Germany cannot get out of the euro. What it has to do, therefore, is make the economy more flexible—to eliminate the restrictions on prices, on wages and on employment; in short, the regulations that keep 10 percent of the German workforce unemployed. This is far more urgent than it would otherwise be if Germany were not in the euro.

This set of policies would open up the German potential. After all, Germany has a very able and productive workforce. It has high-quality products that are valued all over the world. It has every opportunity to be a productive, growing state. It just has to give its entrepreneurs a chance. It has to let them make money, hire and fire, and act like entrepreneurs.

Instead, what you have as a result of past policies is that German entrepreneurs go outside of Germany for many of their activities. They are investing abroad instead of at home because there isn’t the openness, fluidity and opportunity they find outside their borders.

[Quote:]

A one-armed man who took too long to unload luggage at Melbourne airport was given a parking ticket.
Now the airport authority has threatened to take him to court if he doesn’t pay the fine.

Stephen McKenzie-McHarg was told by an airport parking officer he could park in a bus zone to help his family with their bags if he was quick.

But while his motor was still running, and he was struggling with the luggage, another parking inspector wrote him a ticket.

“I’ve been without an arm since I was 21. (Now) I’m 54 and used to physical work, but I knew I was in trouble,” he said this week.

“I said to the first inspector, ‘I’ve travelled five hours from the country and I’ve got two women to pick up with six big suitcases’. The head man said, ‘Be quick’.”

“I wasn’t 30 seconds, but the next little fella threw the book at me.”

Mr McKenzie-McHarg said the car was never out of his sight while he helped with his wife and daughter’s bags.

Is anybody surprised by this:

Melbourne airport spokeswoman Brooke Lord said a strict policy was necessary because of terrorism fears and Federal Government requirements.

[Quote:]

The ACLU of Georgia released copies of government files on Wednesday that illustrate the extent to which the FBI, the DeKalb County Division of Homeland Security and other government agencies have gone to compile information on Georgians suspected of being threats simply for expressing controversial opinions.

Two documents relating to anti-war and anti-government protests, and a vegan rally, prove the agencies have been “spying” on Georgia residents unconstitutionally, the ACLU said. (Related: ACLU Complaint — PDF file)

For example, more than two dozen government surveillance photographs show 22-year-old Caitlin Childs of Atlanta, a strict vegetarian, and other vegans picketing against meat eating, in December 2003. They staged their protest outside a HoneyBaked Ham store on Buford Highway in DeKalb County.

An undercover DeKalb County Homeland Security detective was assigned to conduct surveillance of the protest and the protestors, and take the photographs. The detective arrested Childs and another protester after he saw Childs approach him and write down, on a piece of paper, the license plate number of his unmarked government car.

“They told me if I didn’t give over the piece of paper I would go to jail and I refused and I went to jail, and the piece of paper was taken away from me at the jail and the officer who transferred me said that was why I was arrested,” Childs said on Wednesday.

As BoingBoing says, once every person with a nonstandard dietary preference has been imprisoned, I’m sure we’ll be able to leave our shoes on in the airport again.

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An alleged burglar was rescued Thursday after he got stuck overnight in the oven vent of the convenience store he was trying to rob, the fire department said.

Investigators said Lonnie Shields, 37, climbed into a small vent on the roof of the New City Mart at about 2 a.m. and wasn’t found until store employees arrived at about 8 a.m.

Shields, who faces charges of burglary of a structure, was treated at a nearby hospital and booked into Orange County Jail on $1,000 bond.

“He was banged up and crunched up and uncomfortable from being in that pipe for about six hours,” Orlando fire chief Greg Hoggatt said.

[Quote:]

In October, for example, George Deutsch, a presidential appointee in NASA headquarters, told a Web designer working for the agency to add the word “theory” after every mention of the Big Bang, according to an e-mail message from Mr. Deutsch that another NASA employee forwarded to The Times.

[..]

The Big Bang memo came from Mr. Deutsch, a 24-year-old presidential appointee in the press office at NASA headquarters whose résumé says he was an intern in the “war room” of the 2004 Bush-Cheney re-election campaign. A 2003 journalism graduate of Texas A&M, he was also the public-affairs officer who sought more control over Dr. Hansen’s public statements.

In October 2005, Mr. Deutsch sent an e-mail message to Flint Wild, a NASA contractor working on a set of Web presentations about Einstein for middle-school students. The message said the word “theory” needed to be added after every mention of the Big Bang.

The Big Bang is “not proven fact; it is opinion,” Mr. Deutsch wrote, adding, “It is not NASA’s place, nor should it be to make a declaration such as this about the existence of the universe that discounts intelligent design by a creator.”

It continued: “This is more than a science issue, it is a religious issue. And I would hate to think that young people would only be getting one-half of this debate from NASA. That would mean we had failed to properly educate the very people who rely on us for factual information the most.”

I have a suggestion for these theocratic neomedievalists. Every time evolution or the big bang is mentioned, I will use the word theory in the same sentence. Every time a Christian, Muslim or Jew speaks of anything to do with their religion, they must use the phrase “ancient tribal myth” in the same sentence.

0.567143290409783872999968662210355549753815787186512508135131…

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The following is a transcript of a teaching experiment, using the Socratic method, with a regular third grade class in a suburban elementary school. I present my perspective and views on the session, and on the Socratic method as a teaching tool, following the transcript. The class was conducted on a Friday afternoon beginning at 1:30, late in May, with about two weeks left in the school year. This time was purposely chosen as one of the most difficult times to entice and hold these children’s concentration about a somewhat complex intellectual matter. The point was to demonstrate the power of the Socratic method for both teaching and also for getting students involved and excited about the material being taught. There were 22 students in the class. I was told ahead of time by two different teachers (not the classroom teacher) that only a couple of students would be able to understand and follow what I would be presenting. When the class period ended, I and the classroom teacher believed that at least 19 of the 22 students had fully and excitedly participated and absorbed the entire material. The three other students’ eyes were glazed over from the very beginning, and they did not seem to be involved in the class at all. The students’ answers below are in capital letters.

The experiment was to see whether I could teach these students binary arithmetic (arithmetic using only two numbers, 0 and 1) only by asking them questions. None of them had been introduced to binary arithmetic before. Though the ostensible subject matter was binary arithmetic, my primary interest was to give a demonstration to the teacher of the power and benefit of the Socratic method where it is applicable.

A very nice read!

[Quote:]

1. Republican Leaders of both houses are under criminal investigation.
2. Senate Majority Leader and Medical Doctor Bill Frist, who collected stray cats and dissected them for extra practice, supports abstinence only education that teaches HIV is transmitted through tears and sweat.. When pressed, First admits “it would be difficult.”

3. Bush appoints evangelical Christian Dr. David Hager to the FDA’s panel on women’s health.
   Although staunchly opposed to pre-marital sex and abortion, Hager would anally rape his sleeping wife after she suffered bouts of narcolepsy. Ms. Hager never complained, just took the large piles of money off the dresser the next morning. When these allegations finally surfaced, Hager, a gynecologist, claimed that he missed. Meanwhile, Dr. Hager has single-handedly blocked over-the-counter sales of the morning-after pill from being legal because of his strong, Christian values.
4. The President’s nominee to head the E.P.A. tested pesticides on poor black babies.
5. The administration forces NASA to add the word “theory” to any publication referencing “The Big Bang.”

(the list goes all the way to 50…)

[Quote:]

The British government will today publicly defy the United States by giving money for safe abortion services in developing countries to organisations that have been cut off from American funding.

Nearly 70,000 women and girls died last year because they went to back-street abortionists. Hundreds of thousands of others suffered serious injuries.

Critics of America’s aid policy say some might have lived if the US had not withdrawn funding from clinics that provide safe services – or that simply tell women where to find them.

The “global gag” rule, as it has become known, was imposed by President George Bush in 2001. It requires any organisation applying for US funds to sign an undertaking not to counsel women on abortion – other than advising against it – or provide abortion services.

The UK will today become the founder donor of a fund set up specifically to attempt to replace the lost dollars and increase safe abortion services.

[..]

The “global gag”, he said, had increased the number of unsafe abortions by stopping funding to clinics that primarily provide contraception. “What I’ve never been able to figure out about American policy is why they persist in cutting down funding to organisations that are about preventing unwanted pregnancies.”

And for those Americans that oppose Roe vs Wade, here’s a statistic you’ll see reproduced at home if you’re ever succesful:

The death and injury toll is highest in countries where abortion is illegal or severely restricted, as in Kenya, where some 30% to 50% of maternal deaths are a result of unsafe abortion.