Venezuela's Hugo Chavez wants UN out of United States

By Irwin Arieff

Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez used the United Nations on Thursday to fire a broadside at the United States, saying the world body should move out of New York over the war in Iraq.

# posted by Jon Easton : 10:59 AM  0 comments

Nobel Laureates Frown on Curriculum Plans

Fri Sep 16, 3:18 PM ET

Thirty-eight Nobel Prize laureates asked state educators to reject proposed science standards that treat evolution as a seriously questionable theory, calling it instead the "indispensable" foundation of biology.

from yahoo news

# posted by Jon Easton : 10:49 AM  0 comments

Son of Florida Gov. Bush Arrested

The youngest son of Florida Gov. Jeb Bush was arrested early Friday and charged with public intoxication and resisting arrest, law enforcement officials said.

John Ellis Bush, 21, was arrested by agents of the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission at 2:30 a.m. on a corner of Austin's Sixth Street bar district, said commission spokesman Roger Wade.

The nephew of President Bush was released on $2,500 bond for the resisting arrest charge, and on a personal recognizance bond for the public intoxication charge, officials said.

from yahoo news

# posted by Jon Easton : 10:41 AM  0 comments

Schwarzenegger Says He'll Seek Re-Election

By BETH FOUHY, AP Political Writer

After weeks of dropping hints, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger confirmed that he's running for re-election next year.

"I'm going to follow through with this here. I'm not in there for three years. I originally got into this ... to finish the job. I'm in there for seven years," he told an enthusiastic crowd of about 200 invited guests. "Yes, I will run for governor."

# posted by Jon Easton : 10:26 AM  0 comments

New Hampshire man charged with attempted abduction in N.J.

September 16, 2005

GALLOWAY, N.J. --After a three-week search that took police to rural northern New Hampshire, a man was arrested and charged with attempting to kidnap a 15-year-old boy near the Jersey Shore.

George Nugent, 58, of Whitefield, N.H., faces extradition next month from New Hampshire, where he has been held in the Coos County jail on $100,000 bail since his arrest Tuesday.

Authorities said Nugent met a boy who was riding a bike near the boy's Galloway Township home on Aug. 21 and tried to chain him to the inside of Nugent's Jeep.

The boy fought Nugent off, police said. But it took bolt cutters to remove a 4-foot chain the man had allegedly locked around the youth's neck.

# posted by Jon Easton : 10:22 AM  0 comments

“Winning the war on terror requires more than tough-sounding words repeated in the election season. America needs clear, moral purpose and leaders who will not waver, especially in the tough times. … Unlike my opponent, I understand the struggle America faces and I have a strategy to win. Our first duty in the war on terror is to protect the homeland.”

VERSUS

9/11 Commission report card, 9/14/05:

# posted by Jon Easton : 10:16 AM  0 comments

A Greenville Technical College official who twice referred to New Orleans evacuees in Greenville as "yard apes" has resigned, school officials said.

from Crooks & Liars

# posted by Jon Easton : 9:27 AM  0 comments

BOSTON — The state Legislature voted Thursday to override Gov. Mitt Romney´s veto of a measure that will expand access to emergency contraception.

The measure, which the Republican governor vetoed in July, will require hospital emergency room doctors to offer the medication to rape victims. It also will make the medication available without a prescription.

The Senate voted unanimously 37-0 to override the veto. In the House, the vote was 139-16 to override.

# posted by Jon Easton : 9:20 AM  0 comments

Last night on O’Reilly, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice claimed she couldn’t assess Bush’s current poll numbers:

O’REILLY: How do you assess President Bush’s falling poll numbers? He’s at the lowest level of his presidency now. Why do you think that’s happening?
RICE: Well, Bill, I’m not one who can assess poll numbers in American politics.

But when Bush’s poll numbers weren’t at the lowest levels of his presidency, she had no trouble telling O’Reilly what those high poll numbers meant:

RICE: Look, the president — first of all, I think one has to look at polls. And he was at astronomically high levels. But see, when you go out there and you talk to Americans, they trust this president. They know that this president is doing everything that he can on the war on terror.

from think progress

# posted by Jon Easton : 9:13 AM  0 comments

Judge Orders Release of Jailed Grandmother

By KEVIN MCGILL and JOHN SOLOMON, Associated Press

A 73-year-old diabetic grandmother and church elder who fled Katrina's floodwaters for the safety of a hotel ended up in prison instead for more than two weeks — all over a bite of food.

Police in this New Orleans suburb arrested Merlene Maten the day after the hurricane on charges she took $63.50 in goods from a looted deli. Though never before in trouble with the law, her bail was set at a stiff $50,000 and she was shipped away to a state penitentiary.

Family and eyewitnesses insist Maten's prison odyssey was unwarranted, claiming she only had gone to her car to get some sausage to eat when officers cuffed her in frustration, unable to catch younger looters at a nearby store.

Despite intervention from the nation's largest senior lobby, volunteer lawyers from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and even a private attorney, the family fought a futile battle for 16 days to get her freed.

# posted by Jon Easton : 8:34 AM  0 comments

The beauty products from the skin of executed Chinese prisoners

· Cosmetics firm targets UK market ·
Lack of regulation puts users at risk

A Chinese cosmetics company is using skin harvested from the corpses of executed convicts to develop beauty products for sale in Europe, an investigation by the Guardian has discovered.

Agents for the firm have told would-be customers it is developing collagen for lip and wrinkle treatments from skin taken from prisoners after they have been shot. The agents say some of the company's products have been exported to the UK, and that the use of skin from condemned convicts is "traditional" and nothing to "make such a big fuss about".

Ian Cobain and Adam Luck
Tuesday September 13, 2005
The Guardian

# posted by Jon Easton : 7:24 AM  0 comments

Hoping to sock Democratic challenger Fernando Ferrer right where it hurts - in the checkbook - Mayor Bloomberg moved swiftly yesterday to trumpet his backing by some of the city's biggest Democratic givers.

The group, dubbed Democrats For Bloomberg, was supposed to convey a sense of broad, cross-party support for the Republican mayor as he heads toward November's election.

But these weren't just any Democrats: There was Steven Rattner, the financier who was a fund-raiser and adviser to presidential candidate John Kerry.

There was Roger Altman, deputy treasury secretary under President Bill Clinton, and Alan Patricof, big giver to Democratic presidential hopeful Gen. Wesley Clark.
.................

"While we honor and love our party," said Rattner, "we recognize our higher obligation to our city. That's why we are here today - to say to our fellow Democrats, you can be true blue and still be true Bloomberg."

The event was the culmination of efforts by Bloomberg to choke off funds to the eventual Democratic nominee by locking up the party's most stalwart givers. Bloomberg, a billionaire and former Democrat, is financing his own big-money campaign.

Rattner, whose wife, Maureen White, is finance chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, said the message was clear.

"I think we are basically saying to Democrats, 'Do whatever you think is right,'" he said. "But ... if you support the mayor, then presumably you are not going to be giving to other candidates."

# posted by Jon Easton : 7:06 AM  0 comments

I had hear that the number of journalists killed since the start of the invasion was 66. That number surpasses the 63 journalists killed over 20 years of conflict in Vietnam. They are saying only 40.... 13 being kills by US troops. Still pretty impressive... Maybe THAT'S what happend to the Liberal Media! One thing is certain this whistle blower will be made to pay.

Watchdog slams US forces for media deaths in Iraq

The report by the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists, or CPJ, said U.S. troops had killed 13 journalists since the U.S.-led war started in March 2003, and at least 40 other reporters had been killed in the conflict.

From Yahoo News

# posted by Jon Easton : 7:19 PM  0 comments

House backs hate crime measure protecting gays

By Joanne Kenen1

The U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday unexpectedly backed a measure to expand federal hate crime protection to gay people, a measure that House conservatives had blocked for years.

The Senate has passed similar legislation, which also expanded protections for the disabled, several times in recent years but House conservatives had argued that these cases should be dealt with on a local or state level without additional federal intervention.

From Yahoo news

# posted by Jon Easton : 7:14 PM  1 comments

Pope Benedict Tells Exorcists To "Carry On Their Important Work"...

Orthodontists have national conventions, as do lawyers and computer salespeople. So why not exorcists? At the end of his weekly general audience Wednesday Pope Benedict greeted Italian exorcists who, he disclosed, are currently holding their national convention.

The Pope encouraged them to "carry on their important work in the service of the Church."

# posted by Jon Easton : 5:37 PM  0 comments

HONG KONG: Yahoo, Chinese Police, and a Jailed Journalist

# posted by Jon Easton : 4:42 PM  0 comments

"But the second thought I had when I saw these people and they had to shut down the Astrodome and lock it down, I thought: I didn't think I could hate victims faster than the 9-11 victims. These guys -- you know it's really sad. We're not hearing anything about Mississippi. We're not hearing anything about Alabama. We're hearing about the victims in New Orleans. This is a 90,000-square-mile disaster site, New Orleans is 181 square miles. A hundred and -- 0.2 percent of the disaster area is New Orleans! And that's all we're hearing about, are the people in New Orleans. Those are the only ones we're seeing on television are the scumbags -- and again, it's not all the people in New Orleans. Most of the people in New Orleans got out! It's just a small percentage of those who were left in New Orleans, or who decided to stay in New Orleans, and they're getting all the attention. It's exactly like the 9-11 victims' families. There's about 10 of them that are spoiling it for everybody."

# posted by Jon Easton : 1:49 PM  1 comments

Bush Not Aware That His Own FEMA Director No Longer Works For Him

“Maybe you know something I don’t know.”

That was President Bush’s reponse to a reporter who asked whether he had heard that his own FEMA director, Michael Brown, resigned today from the administration. For the second time today, Bush demonstrated that the Commander-in-Chief is not on top of things.

The Right Wing Myths about Katrina, Debunked

[From think progress blog]

# posted by Jon Easton : 1:36 PM  1 comments