Academic Freedom is sacred. Therefore we have to limit it.

Dear Notre Dame President Jenkins. Take mind of this quote:

“If what you teach your children is the truth, then it won’t matter if they are exposed to other ideas.”

And tell me what it means for your precious Catholic belief system.

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This North Island brown kiwi hatched at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo in Washington, D.C., this week—only the second of these rare birds to hatch during the zoo’s 116-year history.

Kiwi chicks hatch fully feathered with their eyes open and begin foraging for small worms and berries after their first week of life, since they receive no help from their parents.

The kiwi hatched on Monday, February 13, weighing in at 9.7 ounces (275 grams) after 64 days of incubation. Zoo staff monitored the egg each day, by weighing it and using a bright light to illuminate the egg’s interior.

The National Zoo is one of just four zoos in the world to breed kiwis outside of New Zealand. In 1975 the National Zoo was the first institution outside of New Zealand to hatch a kiwi. That 30-year-old bird is still on exhibit at the zoo’s Bird House.

The five recognized species of kiwis are all flightless, nocturnal, burrowing birds that are unique to New Zealand. North Island brown kiwis are listed as endangered by the International Union of Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources.

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Yahoo! is banning the use of allah in email names – even if the letters are included within another name.

This was uncovered by Reg reader Ed Callahan whose mother Linda Callahan was trying to sign up for a Verizon email address. She could not get it to accept her surname.

Enquiries to Verizon revealed that a partnership with Yahoo! was to blame. Yahoo! will not accept any identies which include the letters “allah”.

Nor will Yahoo! accept yahoo, osama or binladen. But it will accept god, messiah, jesus, jehova, buddah, satan and both priest and pedophile.

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Upon their return from Iraq, tribe members receive the highest honor for bravery: an eagle feather. If they are injured in combat, the feather may be stained red with blood.

Before the first night’s ceremony began, a 65-year-old Vietnam veteran named John Around Him looked at the staff, and then at Brett Lundstrom’s flag-draped casket.

“He earns the American flag from his government,” he said. “He earns the eagle feather from his people.”

Near 11 on Saturday night, the gymnasium fell silent. Along with his first and last eagle feather, Cpl. Lundstrom was about to receive something even more enduring.

“This evening I want to take a few minutes of your time to name my grandson,” said Birgil Kills Straight, Cpl. Lundstrom’s great-uncle.

“Before he enters the spirit world, it’s important for him to have an Indian name, because that’s how the ancestors will know him,” he said.

Earlier that night, Kills Straight had gone to an Inipi, a sweat lodge, to pray for the name, and to ask the spirits to guide the fallen warrior.

After the ceremony, long after midnight, the Marines would take Lundstrom’s body into the tepee, where Lakota beliefs hold that the spirits of Lundstrom’s ancestors would communicate with his.

First, Kills Straight said, they needed to know who he was.

“His name is Wanbli Isnala,” Kills Straight said, and then translated: “Lone Eagle.”

With that, he took the eagle feather, walked to the open casket, and placed it on the Marine’s chest.

“He, alone, above everything else, is an eagle,” Kills Straight said. “He will fly to the highest reaches of the universe. He may bring back news to us in our dreams.”

U.S. Marines prepare to transfer the flag-draped casket carrying Cpl. Brett Lundstrom, 22, from a hearse to a wagon last Saturday on the road leading to Kyle, S.D.

A horse drawn wagon carries the casket of Cpl. Brett Lundstrom on the road leading to Kyle, SD, on Saturday, January 14, 2006. As a Lakota, the Marine was honored during a three day wake service at the Little Wound School in Kyle, SD. Lundstrom was killed in Fallujah on January 7, 2006, and will be buried at Fort Logan National Cemetery.

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Hans Blokland van de Christenunie/SGP is in het Europees Parlement het meest aanwezig van alle Nederlanse vertegenwoordigers. SP’ster Kartika Liotard en Paul van Buitenen (Europa Transparant) zijn van de Nederlandse Europarlementsleden het minste aanwezig. Dat blijkt uit een overzicht op de website ep–monitor.nl.

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Het overzicht toont dat PvdA’er Thijs Berman van alle Nederlanders de meeste stemmingen heeft gemist terwijl hij wel aanwezig was. Hij sloeg inmiddels 185 stemmingen over.

Tja, slaapverwekkend, hoor, die vergaderingen. En om aan te geven dat democratie – in de vorm van het uitbrengen van een stem – de top prioriteit van een politicus heeft zegt Berman:

„Het kost me de helft van het daggeld. Helemaal niet leuk”.

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Jesus Christ, eponymous leader of every single Christian denomination ever, has officially apologized for having been crucified by the Romans some two thousand years ago. “Next time I will be more careful,�? said Jesus

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Four out of 10 British Muslims want sharia law introduced into parts of the country, a survey reveals today.

The ICM opinion poll also indicates that a fifth have sympathy with the “feelings and motives” of the suicide bombers who attacked London last July 7, killing 52 people, although 99 per cent thought the bombers were wrong to carry out the atrocity.

Overall, the findings depict a Muslim community becoming more radical and feeling more alienated from mainstream society, even though 91 per cent still say they feel loyal to Britain.

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One night this January, in a ceremony at the Officers’ Club at Fort Myer, in Arlington, Virginia, which sits on a hill with a commanding view across the Potomac River to the Washington Monument, Alberto J. Mora, the outgoing general counsel of the United States Navy, stood next to a podium in the club’s ballroom. A handsome gray-haired man in his mid-fifties, he listened with a mixture of embarrassment and pride as his colleagues toasted his impending departure. Amid the usual tributes were some more pointed comments.

“Never has there been a counsel with more intellectual courage or personal integrity,�? David Brant, the former head of the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, said. Brant added somewhat cryptically, “He surprised us into doing the right thing.�? Conspicuous for his silence that night was Mora’s boss, William J. Haynes II, the general counsel of the Department of Defense.

Back in Haynes’s office, on the third floor of the Pentagon, there was a stack of papers chronicling a private battle that Mora had waged against Haynes and other top Administration officials, challenging their tactics in fighting terrorism. Some of the documents are classified and, despite repeated requests from members of the Senate Armed Services Committee and the Senate Judiciary Committee, have not been released. One document, which is marked “secret�? but is not classified, is a twenty-two-page memo written by Mora. It shows that three years ago Mora tried to halt what he saw as a disastrous and unlawful policy of authorizing cruelty toward terror suspects.

A very interesting article, but the money quote:

Without Mora’s knowledge, the Pentagon had pursued a secret detention policy. There was one version, enunciated in Haynes’s letter to Leahy, aimed at critics. And there was another, giving the operations officers legal indemnity to engage in cruel interrogations, and, when the Commander-in-Chief deemed it necessary, in torture. Legal critics within the Administration had been allowed to think that they were engaged in a meaningful process; but their deliberations appeared to have been largely an academic exercise, or, worse, a charade. “It seems that there was a two-track program here,�? said Martin Lederman, a former lawyer with the Office of Legal Counsel, who is now a visiting professor at Georgetown. “Otherwise, why would they share the final working-group report with Hill and Miller but not with the lawyers who were its ostensible authors?�?

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De Tweede Kamer heeft een motie aangenomen waarin staat dat de Nederlandse regering niet mag instemmen met de Europese bewaarplicht.

De fracties van de SP, GroenLinks, de PvdA, de Groep Wilders, D66, de VVD en de LPF schaarden zich vorige week donderdag achter een motie die was ingediend door D66-kamerlid Boris Dittrich. Dat blijkt uit het stenografisch verslag van het kamerdebat.

Volgens de motie van Dittrich komt de Europese richtlijn voor de bewaarplicht ‘onvoldoende tegemoet aan de wensen van het Nederlandse parlement’. De Tweede Kamer wil daarom dat Nederland dinsdag (vandaag) tijdens de zogeheten JBZ-raad niet instemt met de richtlijn. De JBZ-raad is een bijeenkomst van de Europese ministers van Justitie en Binnenlandse Zaken.

Minister Piet Hein Donner (Justitie) heeft de motie van Dittrich echter naast zich neergelegd. De bewindsman meent dat Nederland internationaal te boek zal komen te staan als een ‘onbetrouwbare partner’ als hij de richtlijn tijdens de JBZ-raad alsnog ter discussie stelt. “Ik kan geen motie uitvoeren die inhoudt dat, als ik namens Nederland ‘ja’ zeg, het de volgende vergadering ‘nee’ is.”

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The Motorized Pool Lounger may be the most advanced pool lounger in the world—and it’s definitely the most fun! Two quiet but powerful motors will propel you around your pool in comfort and style, with easy-to-use joysticks that control two independent propellers.

Why just float when you can drive?

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It’s been nearly 17 years since the Exxon Valdez spilled 11 million gallons of crude oil along the Alaska coast in one of the country’s worst environmental disasters, and a jury’s $5 billion judgment against the company is still tied up in the courts.

I came across this exercise suggested for seniors, to build muscle strength in the arms and shoulders. It seems so easy, so I thought I’d pass it on. The article suggested doing it three days a week.

Begin by standing on a comfortable surface, where you have plenty of room at each side.

With a 5-lb. potato sack in each hand, extend your arms straight out from your sides, and hold them there as long as you can. Try to reach a full minute, then relax. Each day, you’ll find that you can hold this position for just a bit longer.

After a couple of weeks, move up to 10-lb. potato sacks. Then 50-lb. potato sacks, and then eventually try to get to where you can lift a 100-lb. potato sack in each hand and hold your arms straight for more than a full minute.

Once you feel confident at that level, put a potato in each of the sacks.

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A top Pentagon lawyer warned the White House that its detainee policy would lead to the kind of abuse that eventually took place at
Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison, according to a report in a magazine.

Albert Mora, who until January was the US Navy’s general counsel with the equivalent rank of a four-star general, told his superiors in late 2002 that a secret decision by Bush early in the year to circumvent the Geneva conventions against mistreatment of war prisoners would likely lead to criminal abuse of US detainees.

According to the New Yorker magazine, Mora, often supported by other senior Pentagon legal officials, fought a quiet battle for years against the “unlawful” and “dangerous” legal justifications for White House-sanctioned detainee mistreatment.

However, it said, he was blocked at top levels, especially by a group of lawyers aligned with Vice President Dick Cheney, the magazine said.

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Mora, whose parents both escaped from repressive communist regimes — his mother from Hungary and his father from Cuba — said such a background made it impossible to tolerate the Bush administration position.

“My mother would have killed me if I hadn’t spoken up. No Hungarian after Communism, or Cuban after Castro, is not aware that human rights are incompatible with cruelty,” he told the magazine.

Iraqi residents look at the remains of a destroyed garbage bin at a park square after a bomb attack in Baghdad February 20, 2006. A bomb exploded beside a group of labourers in Baghdad on Monday, wounding at least 19 people, Interior Ministry sources said. The labourers were gathered in a central Baghdad square in search of work when the bomb went off.

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Of all the Iraqis struggling to make sense of violence ravaging their country, few are as desperate as the laborers who cannot understand why they were bombed yet again on Monday while trying to earn a few dollars.

A bomb hidden under a tea seller’s cart exploded in central Baghdad beside a crowd of workers, wounding 19 people.

“We are not policemen. We are not in the army. We are not in the government. We are just poor people,” said Sayid Rasoul, standing at the site of the blast in Bab al-Sharjee, where laborers have been attacked at least seven times.

Much of Iraq’s violence is driven by sectarian tensions.

Sunni insurgents have staged bombings that have killed thousands of Shi’ites. Shi’ite militias are accused of running death squads against Sunnis.

Iraqis have also faced random suicide bombings like the one that killed at least 12 people on a bus in central Baghdad on Monday, one of the attacks apparently designed to fuel chaos.

But laborers are baffled by violence against men who gather in Baghdad seeking work, a daily ritual that has nothing to do with sectarianism or politics.

Hussein Ali said laborers are always at risk whether they are Shi’ite or Sunni. “How can I feed my family? The government does not protect us. I get work maybe once or twice a week and I make an average of $20,” he said.

“Two days ago our suppliers were selling pipes to laborers and gunmen drove up and opened fire. The police did nothing. Who is fighting us? We have no idea.”

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Bijna de helft van de Nederlanders schaamt zich voor premier Jan-Peter Balkenende (CDA). Dat schrijft de Volkskrant dinsdag naar aanleiding van een onderzoek van TNS Nipo en de Universiteit Leiden.

Van de ondervraagden zei 49 procent boosheid op te voelen komen bij het horen van de naam van de premier. Bijna een op de vijf van de ondervraagden is enthousiast over hem.