The Gallup Poll reports today that “The percentage of Americans who say that most members of Congress are corrupt has increased significantly from the beginning of this year, and is now at the point at which slightly fewer than half of Americans believe most members are corrupt.”
This, interestingly, is similar to what Gallup found just prior to the 1994 elections, when Republicans swept Democrats out of power.
Sounds pretty good, except for this:
However, there is a twist: Relatively few Americans think their own member is corrupt.
That could pose a slight problem, don’t you think?
The city council in Black Jack, Mo., has rejected a measure allowing unmarried couples with multiple children to live together. The mayor said those who fall into that category could soon face eviction.
Olivia Shelltrack and Fondrey Loving were denied an occupancy permit after moving into a home in this St. Louis suburb because they have three children and are not married.
The town’s planning and zoning commission proposed a change in the law, but the measure was rejected Tuesday by the city council in a 5-3 vote.
People accuse Bin Laden of living in another century… Mo is living on another planet. For shit’s sake, this is as Taliban-like as anything else I’ve heard of.
Think of the children. Obvious they’d be at risk of … um, well … something bad if they lived with two adults who didn’t have the government’s permission to live together.
After all, a state that’s tied for 13th worst infant mortality rate in a country that’s tied for 2nd worst among developed nations must know something about what’s good for the children, right?
Right?
(It’s a local measure, but marriage is a state thing.)
NEW YORK (AP) – The FBI is investigating whether police violated the rights of protesters at the 2004 Republican National Convention, according to a letter sent by the bureau to the New York Civil Liberties Union.
In the letter – received Tuesday and provided to The Associated Press by the NYCLU – the FBI asked the civil rights group for help, saying it believed the organization’s lawyers had represented people arrested at the convention.
The FBI said it was trying to identify people against whom charges were dismissed because of contradictory videotape evidence. It cited in particular a man whose case was tossed after a videotape contradicted the arresting officer’s story.
Apparently most of the NYPD’s massive arrests during the last Republican National Convention turned out to be bogus. The ACLU represented many of those arrested and came up with a lot of video that in many cases proved outright that the police who testified in court were lying through their teeth. Conyers wrote to the FBI who is now investigating the NYPD. The FBI is asking the ACLU for help. Ney York’s Police Commissioner is sticking to his lies:
“In a May 10 letter to a city agency empowered to investigate complaints against police, police Commissioner Raymond Kelly defended the department’s policing, calling the convention one of its “finest hours.”
Amy Goodman also interviewed one of the lawyers who worked on the case yesterday on DemocracyNow! He shed light on the underhanded tactics and dishonesty of the NYPD. It was a fascinating interview. You can find it here
Is anyone surprised? Does ANYONE in this Bush government do their job? ANYONE? link
Federal Air Marshals’ Bosses Accused of Arrogance, Cover-Up
A damning investigation of the Federal Air Marshal program is set to be released by Congress next week, staffers tell ABC News.
“The attitude of this agency stinks,” the Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, James Sensenbrenner, told Brian Ross in an interview to be broadcast on World News Tonight and 20/20 this Friday.
Sensenbrenner said officials of the Air Marshal program “stonewalled” his staff and retaliated against air marshals who tried to reveal problems. [snip]
“I think the American public will be shocked,” Sensenbrenner said of his committee’s findings.
ROME, Italy (BBC News) May 17 — “We consider the war and occupation in Iraq a grave error that hasn’t solved – but has complicated – the problem of security,” Mr Romano Prodi said in his first speech to Italy’s Senate as prime minister. “It is the intention of this government to propose to parliament the return of our troops from Iraq.”
The previous government of centre-right PM Silvio Berlusconi had decided to withdraw Italy’s 2,600 troops from Iraq by the end of 2006.
Objectives
Prodi added that most importantly, the international community should not be “indulgent to suggestions of fundamentalism of the opposing strain, which preach crusades and indiscriminately advocate clashes of civilisations.”
WASHINGTON D.C. (WaPo) May 17 — Bush’s best friends from the start of the Iraq war in 2003 are dropping off one after the other. The party of Spain’s prime minister, Jose Maria Aznar, was ousted in 2004 by voters upset in part by troop deployments in Iraq. The prime minister of Portugal, who stood next to Bush days before the invasion, resigned months later for another job.
The leaders of Poland and Ukraine, which had sizable units in Iraq, were both replaced in elections by successors who pulled out some or all troops. Japan’s prime minister, Junichiro Koizumi, often cited by Bush in stump speeches as one of his best friends abroad, plans to step down in September. And even British Prime Minister Tony Blair, mired in Iraq-related controversies, appears poised to resign next year.
Honduras, Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic originally had forces in Iraq but withdrew them.
Twenty six countries, including Australia, South Korea, Japan and Britain, remain active in the multi-national force, mostly in relatively small contingents.
Our first story is a little long, but I wanted to share all the details with you:
Alien solar system discovered Astronomers on Thursday reported they had found three Neptune-sized planets orbiting a distant star, in a discovery that marks a further step towards the goal of finding another Earth. More than 170 planets outside our own solar system have been spotted in the past decade or so. But almost all of them have been gaseous Jupiter-sized giants that race around their star at a close range. Their atmosphere would be too scorching and too dense to have liquid water, an essential ingredient for life as we know it. Astronomers located the planetary system orbiting the star HD 69830, which is 41 light years from Earth and four-fifths the mass of our Sun. The three planets are big, being 10, 12 and 18 times larger in mass than the Earth. That makes them about the size of our Neptune, although a lot smaller than Jupiter, the biggest planet in our Solar System — and they appear to be solid planets too, made of rock, not gas. The two innermost planets are probably so close to HD 69830 that they would be blisteringly hot, but the outermost one lies in the habitable zone — a comfortable distance where water could exist as a liquid. Another discovery is that HD 69830 also hosts, like our Sun, an asteroid belt, the rubble left over from the building of planets from dust and gassy debris. More here and here.
From the New Scientist website: How’d you like to see yourself 30 years from now? It sounds terrifying to me, but if you fancy looking at an artificially haggard and gnarled version of you then pop over to this site. All you have to do it upload a picture of yourself and they promise to use “facial transforming software” to age you 30 years or so. [Actually, people say I look enough like my father that I just have to look at him to get the idea. Fortunately for me, Mrs. K.P. has always felt my father is “distinguished looking,” LOL.]
Himalayan forests are rapidly disappearing, and the rate of deforestation is so rapid that a quarter of animal and plant species native to this biodiversity hotspot, including tigers and leopards, could be gone by the end of the century. Worse, the Indian government is oblivious to the problem because official figures erroneously suggest that forest cover will rise rather than fall. This mistake has led to the approval of new schemes, such as hydroelectric dams, that will exacerbate the devastation.
University of Virginia researchers have determined how Helicobacter pylori infiltrate stomach lining and cause ulcers. The bacteria can sense acid concentration and use natural gradients of acid, from high to low, to move to a place where they can exist, multiply, and cause damage. They swim from the highly acidic lumen of the stomach down to the underlying epithelial cells where there is less acid.
Mom was right and poppa Bush was wrong – eat your broccoli! Another study has shown the cancer-preventing benefits of broccoli and cauliflower, this time in certain cancers with a hereditary link, including a form of colon cancer. The active compound, sulforaphane, appears to act by inducing apoptosis (programmed cell death) and inhibiting proliferation of the tumors.
Why is this not surprising? The rate of fatal workplace injuries increased for the first time in a decade. On an average day in 2004, 152 workers lost their lives as a result of workplace injuries and diseases and another 11,780 were injured. Wyoming, Alaska, Montana, West Virginia and Kentucky had the highest fatality rates.
[I’d have had more stories, but I ran into a story that immediately turned into a rant that I’m posting separately, LOL. Haven’t done a diary (other than the Jazz Jam) in a while…]
Wisconsin Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, is proposing that ISPs be required to record information about Americans’ online activities
Also involves a new crime, aimed at child porn which is all well and good but it looks very easy to use against the innocent, why does this not surprise me? And tie it with the push to force ISPs to hold and turn over all email and tracking records and it’s looking bleak.
Declan McCullagh, the CNET author of that article was interviewed this morning on DemocracyNow!. Alas, there is no transcription, but you can listen or watch the segment here
He said during the course of that interview that Sensenbrenner is backing off somewhat, due to industry moaning, not public outcry. But this is something that Gonzales has called for, and Sensenbrenner was trying to deliver. Outrageous.
The U.S. Senate has agreed to push back the implementation of tough new restrictions on the Canada-U.S. border by 17 months, backing a Vermont Democrat who called the new rules “a train wreck on the horizon for the northern border.
Although the move is an important step for those backing efforts on both sides of the border to delay or modify restrictions enshrined in U.S. law, yesterday’s Senate move has a long way to go before it is passed by the full U.S. Congress.
The decision to back Senator Patrick Leahy’s amendment comes as a top-level, North American meeting on border issues is taking shape in Canada. The summit, slated for the end of this month in Gimli, Man., will include most of the country’s premiers, U.S. governors, ambassadors for Canada, the U.S. and Mexico — and perhaps Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
(…)
Leahy also said the Bush administration has not properly co-ordinated plans for the new rules with the Harper government.
The amendment, which was co-sponsored by a senior Republican, Ted Stevens of Alaska, would push the date for implementation to June 1, 2009. [link]
Unions are planning to give Australian Prime Minister John Howard a rude welcome today when he visits Parliament.
Howard is in Canada until Saturday and is scheduled to address Parliament at 3 p.m. today. The Public Service Alliance of Canada plans to join the Canadian Autoworkers Union around the Centennial flame to protest his visit.
PSAC president John Gordon said Howard “dismantled” the Australian public service, including cutting to 300 a public works department workforce of 3,000. [link]
A new technology known as the thermal conversion process (TCP; aka thermal depolymerization) has been developed that can turn ANY waste (agricultural, municipal, and industrial) into high-grade light oil. In short, this technology makes oil a renewable.
TCP also destroys bacteria, viruses, and prions (the infectious proteins that cause mad cow and related diseases), eliminates toxins and carcinogens, and breaks down non-biodegradables. The useful byproducts include water and a potent, organic fertilizer. Localized production of oil reduces infrastructural needs (fewer pipelines and tankers). It also helps avert the looming waste management/landfill crisis. To top it off, it creates far more energy than it uses. This is the ultimate in recycling.
I know we would like to eventually get off of oil altogether, but this technology should be seen as a stepping stone or complementary technology to other renewables in meeting that ultimate goal.
Don’t think this is a pipe-dream technology that works in a lab but can’t be scaled up for practical use, either; 2 plants are currently on line. We need to build more ASAP. For more info, read this diary.
THE HAGUE (Reuters) May 17 — A Somali-born lawmaker who may lose her Dutch citizenship because she lied on her asylum application is welcome to move to the United States, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick said.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali, an outspoken critic of Islam, said earlier this week she was resigning and leaving the Netherlands after Immigration Minister Rita Verdonk, a member of her own VVD liberal party, told her she might lose her Dutch passport.
Hirsi Ali has been offered a job by the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative Washington-based think tank, and according to media reports had been in negotiations with two other U.S. institutes.
Zoellick, on a visit to the Netherlands, told journalists Hirsi Ali would be admitted to his country. “The government of the Netherlands is still discussing her ultimate status and that is … for the Netherlands to determine along the way, but she is obviously welcome to the United States,” Zoellick said.
Congress is corrupt: E&P
Sounds pretty good, except for this:
That could pose a slight problem, don’t you think?
They’ve got to be kidding: CBS
People accuse Bin Laden of living in another century… Mo is living on another planet. For shit’s sake, this is as Taliban-like as anything else I’ve heard of.
It’s scary, isn’t it?
Think of the children. Obvious they’d be at risk of … um, well … something bad if they lived with two adults who didn’t have the government’s permission to live together.
After all, a state that’s tied for 13th worst infant mortality rate in a country that’s tied for 2nd worst among developed nations must know something about what’s good for the children, right?
Right?
(It’s a local measure, but marriage is a state thing.)
link to Guardian article
NEW YORK (AP) – The FBI is investigating whether police violated the rights of protesters at the 2004 Republican National Convention, according to a letter sent by the bureau to the New York Civil Liberties Union.
In the letter – received Tuesday and provided to The Associated Press by the NYCLU – the FBI asked the civil rights group for help, saying it believed the organization’s lawyers had represented people arrested at the convention.
The FBI said it was trying to identify people against whom charges were dismissed because of contradictory videotape evidence. It cited in particular a man whose case was tossed after a videotape contradicted the arresting officer’s story.
Apparently most of the NYPD’s massive arrests during the last Republican National Convention turned out to be bogus. The ACLU represented many of those arrested and came up with a lot of video that in many cases proved outright that the police who testified in court were lying through their teeth. Conyers wrote to the FBI who is now investigating the NYPD. The FBI is asking the ACLU for help. Ney York’s Police Commissioner is sticking to his lies:
“In a May 10 letter to a city agency empowered to investigate complaints against police, police Commissioner Raymond Kelly defended the department’s policing, calling the convention one of its “finest hours.”
Amy Goodman also interviewed one of the lawyers who worked on the case yesterday on DemocracyNow! He shed light on the underhanded tactics and dishonesty of the NYPD. It was a fascinating interview. You can find it here
Is anyone surprised? Does ANYONE in this Bush government do their job? ANYONE?
link
A damning investigation of the Federal Air Marshal program is set to be released by Congress next week, staffers tell ABC News.
“The attitude of this agency stinks,” the Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, James Sensenbrenner, told Brian Ross in an interview to be broadcast on World News Tonight and 20/20 this Friday.
Sensenbrenner said officials of the Air Marshal program “stonewalled” his staff and retaliated against air marshals who tried to reveal problems.
[snip]
“I think the American public will be shocked,” Sensenbrenner said of his committee’s findings.
.
ROME, Italy (BBC News) May 17 — “We consider the war and occupation in Iraq a grave error that hasn’t solved – but has complicated – the problem of security,” Mr Romano Prodi said in his first speech to Italy’s Senate as prime minister. “It is the intention of this government to propose to parliament the return of our troops from Iraq.”
The previous government of centre-right PM Silvio Berlusconi had decided to withdraw Italy’s 2,600 troops from Iraq by the end of 2006.
Objectives
Prodi added that most importantly, the international community should not be “indulgent to suggestions of fundamentalism of the opposing strain, which preach crusades and indiscriminately advocate clashes of civilisations.”
WASHINGTON D.C. (WaPo) May 17 — Bush’s best friends from the start of the Iraq war in 2003 are dropping off one after the other. The party of Spain’s prime minister, Jose Maria Aznar, was ousted in 2004 by voters upset in part by troop deployments in Iraq. The prime minister of Portugal, who stood next to Bush days before the invasion, resigned months later for another job.
The leaders of Poland and Ukraine, which had sizable units in Iraq, were both replaced in elections by successors who pulled out some or all troops. Japan’s prime minister, Junichiro Koizumi, often cited by Bush in stump speeches as one of his best friends abroad, plans to step down in September. And even British Prime Minister Tony Blair, mired in Iraq-related controversies, appears poised to resign next year.
Honduras, Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic originally had forces in Iraq but withdrew them.
Twenty six countries, including Australia, South Korea, Japan and Britain, remain active in the multi-national force, mostly in relatively small contingents.
≈ Cross-posted from my diary —
The Role Iran Is Planning in the Country – Baghdad Burning ≈
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."▼ ▼ ▼ MY DIARY
Our first story is a little long, but I wanted to share all the details with you:
Alien solar system discovered Astronomers on Thursday reported they had found three Neptune-sized planets orbiting a distant star, in a discovery that marks a further step towards the goal of finding another Earth. More than 170 planets outside our own solar system have been spotted in the past decade or so. But almost all of them have been gaseous Jupiter-sized giants that race around their star at a close range. Their atmosphere would be too scorching and too dense to have liquid water, an essential ingredient for life as we know it. Astronomers located the planetary system orbiting the star HD 69830, which is 41 light years from Earth and four-fifths the mass of our Sun. The three planets are big, being 10, 12 and 18 times larger in mass than the Earth. That makes them about the size of our Neptune, although a lot smaller than Jupiter, the biggest planet in our Solar System — and they appear to be solid planets too, made of rock, not gas. The two innermost planets are probably so close to HD 69830 that they would be blisteringly hot, but the outermost one lies in the habitable zone — a comfortable distance where water could exist as a liquid. Another discovery is that HD 69830 also hosts, like our Sun, an asteroid belt, the rubble left over from the building of planets from dust and gassy debris. More here and here.
The first evidence monkeys can string “words” together to communicate in a similar way to humans has been found. Putty-nosed monkeys in West Africa share the human ability to combine different sounds to mean different things, according to researchers. Another link, here, includes a wav file of the monkey calls. And in another primate-related story, Humans and chimpanzees may have split away from a common ancestor far more recently than was previously thought. A detailed analysis of human and chimp DNA suggests the lines finally diverged less than 5.4 million years ago. The finding, published in the journal Nature, is about 1-2 million years later than the fossils have indicated. A US team says its results hint at the possibility that interbreeding occurred between the two lines for thousands, even millions, of years. More here.
From the New Scientist website: How’d you like to see yourself 30 years from now? It sounds terrifying to me, but if you fancy looking at an artificially haggard and gnarled version of you then pop over to this site. All you have to do it upload a picture of yourself and they promise to use “facial transforming software” to age you 30 years or so. [Actually, people say I look enough like my father that I just have to look at him to get the idea. Fortunately for me, Mrs. K.P. has always felt my father is “distinguished looking,” LOL.]
Himalayan forests are rapidly disappearing, and the rate of deforestation is so rapid that a quarter of animal and plant species native to this biodiversity hotspot, including tigers and leopards, could be gone by the end of the century. Worse, the Indian government is oblivious to the problem because official figures erroneously suggest that forest cover will rise rather than fall. This mistake has led to the approval of new schemes, such as hydroelectric dams, that will exacerbate the devastation.
University of Virginia researchers have determined how Helicobacter pylori infiltrate stomach lining and cause ulcers. The bacteria can sense acid concentration and use natural gradients of acid, from high to low, to move to a place where they can exist, multiply, and cause damage. They swim from the highly acidic lumen of the stomach down to the underlying epithelial cells where there is less acid.
A study involving the Amborella, a “living fossil plant” found in the South Pacific that has survived on Earth for 130 million years, suggests its novel reproductive structure may be a “missing link” between flowering and non-flowering plants. The peculiar egg-forming structure seen in Amborella may eventually link the odd shrub to gymnosperms such as conifers.
Mom was right and poppa Bush was wrong – eat your broccoli! Another study has shown the cancer-preventing benefits of broccoli and cauliflower, this time in certain cancers with a hereditary link, including a form of colon cancer. The active compound, sulforaphane, appears to act by inducing apoptosis (programmed cell death) and inhibiting proliferation of the tumors.
If we were serious about preventing terrorist acts against chemical plants, we’ve have tax incentives for this: Some 284 chemical facilities in 47 states have dramatically reduced the danger of a chemical release into nearby communities by switching to less acutely hazardous processes or chemicals or moving to safer locations. As a result of these changes, at least 30 million people no longer live under the threat of a major toxic gas cloud from these facilities. Eleven of these facilities formerly threatened more than one million people; another 33 facilities threatened more than 100,000.
Why is this not surprising? The rate of fatal workplace injuries increased for the first time in a decade. On an average day in 2004, 152 workers lost their lives as a result of workplace injuries and diseases and another 11,780 were injured. Wyoming, Alaska, Montana, West Virginia and Kentucky had the highest fatality rates.
[I’d have had more stories, but I ran into a story that immediately turned into a rant that I’m posting separately, LOL. Haven’t done a diary (other than the Jazz Jam) in a while…]
Good Morning all. I have to run after I post this one thing. just wanted you all to have the pot of gold again today…hugs…
the pot of gold
Why bother to collect information legally? Where’s the fun in that? Unbelievable.
Yes, he’s at it again-via cnet
Cnet
Also involves a new crime, aimed at child porn which is all well and good but it looks very easy to use against the innocent, why does this not surprise me? And tie it with the push to force ISPs to hold and turn over all email and tracking records and it’s looking bleak.
Declan McCullagh, the CNET author of that article was interviewed this morning on DemocracyNow!. Alas, there is no transcription, but you can listen or watch the segment here
He said during the course of that interview that Sensenbrenner is backing off somewhat, due to industry moaning, not public outcry. But this is something that Gonzales has called for, and Sensenbrenner was trying to deliver. Outrageous.
A new technology known as the thermal conversion process (TCP; aka thermal depolymerization) has been developed that can turn ANY waste (agricultural, municipal, and industrial) into high-grade light oil. In short, this technology makes oil a renewable.
TCP also destroys bacteria, viruses, and prions (the infectious proteins that cause mad cow and related diseases), eliminates toxins and carcinogens, and breaks down non-biodegradables. The useful byproducts include water and a potent, organic fertilizer. Localized production of oil reduces infrastructural needs (fewer pipelines and tankers). It also helps avert the looming waste management/landfill crisis. To top it off, it creates far more energy than it uses. This is the ultimate in recycling.
I know we would like to eventually get off of oil altogether, but this technology should be seen as a stepping stone or complementary technology to other renewables in meeting that ultimate goal.
Don’t think this is a pipe-dream technology that works in a lab but can’t be scaled up for practical use, either; 2 plants are currently on line. We need to build more ASAP. For more info, read this diary.
.
THE HAGUE (Reuters) May 17 — A Somali-born lawmaker who may lose her Dutch citizenship because she lied on her asylum application is welcome to move to the United States, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick said.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali, an outspoken critic of Islam, said earlier this week she was resigning and leaving the Netherlands after Immigration Minister Rita Verdonk, a member of her own VVD liberal party, told her she might lose her Dutch passport.
Hirsi Ali has been offered a job by the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative Washington-based think tank, and according to media reports had been in negotiations with two other U.S. institutes.
Zoellick, on a visit to the Netherlands, told journalists Hirsi Ali would be admitted to his country. “The government of the Netherlands is still discussing her ultimate status and that is … for the Netherlands to determine along the way, but she is obviously welcome to the United States,” Zoellick said.
≈ Cross-posted from my diary —
Ayaan Hirsi Ali Steps Down as Dutch MP ¶ Joins AEI ≈
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."▼ ▼ ▼ MY DIARY