The seasonal ozone hole over the South Pole has disappeared again after reaching record size earlier this year.
If they cover it at all, I’m betting they don’t give it nearly the air time they give to when it gets bigger.
The [November Guardian/ICM] survey shows that public opinion in Britain is overwhelmingly pro-American with 62% of voters believing that the US is “generally speaking a force for good, not evil, in the world”. It explodes the conventional political wisdom at Westminster that Mr Bush’s visit will prove damaging to Tony Blair. Only 15% of British voters agree with the idea that America is the “evil empire” in the world.
However, it appears that the Mayor of London hasn’t gotten the memo.
Ken Livingstone, the Mayor of London, launched a stinging attack on President George Bush last night, denouncing him as the “greatest threat to life on this planet that we’ve most probably ever seen”.
His provocatively timed comments, on the eve of Mr Bush’s arrival in London tonight, threaten to create severe embarrassment for the Prime Minister.
No, I’d say it’s his own embarrassment. With all the true evil out there in the world, threatening us all, the Mayor and his ilk think that George W. Bush is evil for routing the Taliban and removing a brutal dictator who’s contribution to the landscape included lavish palaces and mass graves. Talk about Newspeak…
“Slavery is a part of Islam,” says Sheik Saleh Al-Fawzan, according to the independent Saudi Information Agency, or SIA.
In a lecture recorded on tape by SIA, the sheik said, “Slavery is part of jihad, and jihad will remain as long there is Islam.”
His religious books are used to teach 5 million Saudi students, both within the country and abroad, including the United States.
Al Fawzan – a member of the Senior Council of Clerics, Saudi Arabia’s highest religious body – says Muslims who contend Islam is against slavery “are ignorant, not scholars.”
“They are merely writers,” he said, according to SIA. “Whoever says such things is an infidel.”
And somehow Israel is more of threat to world peace?
Soros, who has financed efforts to promote open societies in more than 50 countries around the world, is bringing the fight home, he said. On Monday, he and a partner committed up to $5 million to MoveOn.org, a liberal activist group, bringing to $15.5 million the total of his personal contributions to oust Bush.
It’s a “conspiracy” when conservatives are well-financed, but liberals get really quiet when their groups get cash.
Oh, by the way, thanks for nothing, Mr. McCain and Mr. Feingold.
Soros’s contributions are filling a gap in Democratic Party finances that opened after the restrictions in the 2002 McCain-Feingold law took effect. In the past, political parties paid a large share of television and get-out-the-vote costs with unregulated “soft money” contributions from corporations, unions and rich individuals. The parties are now barred from accepting such money. But non-party groups in both camps are stepping in, accepting soft money and taking over voter mobilization.
The best take on this is from the RNC.
“It’s incredibly ironic that George Soros is trying to create a more open society by using an unregulated, under-the-radar-screen, shadowy, soft-money group to do it,” Republican National Committee spokeswoman Christine Iverson said. “George Soros has purchased the Democratic Party.”
You don’t reform anything by regulating it. Campaign finance “reform” has failed. Big donors just route around the regulations, just as it was predicted they would. This true freedom of speech issue ought to be “regulated” by the Constitution; people should be free to support who they please however they please. All the regulations have done is give the small donor less of a voice, and the big donor just has to use a different back door.
“Intifadah? You mean there’s one going on? Now??”
(I’m sure that had nothing to do with the fact that he mentioned “Considerable Quotes” in one of his posts on Friday. >smile
The man who led the charge in the 1970s to remove homosexuality from a list of mental disorders now says that those claiming to be “ex-gay” are telling the truth.
The article goes on to say that this man, Robert Spitzer, was skeptical of “reparative therapy” before starting the study, but has come to agree that it is quite possible (which sounds like those who are willing to look for the truth just might find it). While he agrees that his study is just a first look, further study is probably not going to happen due to institutional bias.
Spitzer, who said he was skeptical of reparative therapy before beginning the study, said more studies need to be done.
“[But] given the cost and complexity of such a study and the current view in the mental health professions of the benefits and risks of reorientation therapy, such a study is not going to happen in the near future,” he wrote. “This is unfortunate because of the real questions raised, albeit admittedly not resolved, by this study.”
<insert image of doctor with hands over ears yelling “La, la, la, la!”>
Hundreds of Florida students are using more than $2.3 million in tax-supported vouchers to get home-schooling or attend part-time private schools — something state lawmakers insist they never intended.
According to the article, it wasn’t until the Education Commissioner was criticized about lax oversight that his department actually looked into this. (Par for the course in government.) So how will they deal with it?
Senate President Jim King, for one, has vowed to try to stop that trend.
“I don’t think that the intent of the McKay scholarships was to let parents home-school with public money,” said King, who ordered two voucher reports this summer that last month delivered stinging critiques. “That would be my feeling, and my vote, as well.”
If homeschoolers shouldn’t get public money to pay for education, then they shouldn’t be taxed for the public schools facilities they aren’t using, either. Let us keep our own money and spend it as we see fit. That really isn’t much to ask; it avoids the problem of government waste, keeps folks from whining over religious homeschoolers getting government money, and is >gasp< fair. I know all this efficiency is completely at odds with the way governments work, but that’s a feature, not a bug.
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