Bush aides normal US Citizens after all

AP

President Bush’s top advisers are not immune from congressional subpoenas, a federal judge ruled Thursday in an unprecedented dispute between the two political branches.

House Democrats called the ruling a ringing endorsement of the principle that nobody is above the law.

In his ruling, U.S. District Judge John Bates said there’s no legal basis for Bush’s argument and that his former legal counsel, Harriet Miers, must appear before Congress. If she wants to refuse to testify, he said, she must do so in person. The committee also has sought to force testimony from White House chief of staff Joshua Bolten.

“Harriet Miers is not immune from compelled congressional process; she is legally required to testify pursuant to a duly issued congressional subpoena,” Bates wrote. He said that both Bolten and Miers must give Congress all non-privileged documents related to the firings.

Well, what do you know about that. Turns out Bush aides do not live in some parallel universe of unlimited "Executive Privilege" after all. Good gracious. Next thing you know, we'll be saying that they're capable of breaking laws too.

God Gays and Guns

AP
Those three issues that the right loves to rally around so much all came together in the murder of two Unitarian Universalist congregants...

An out-of-work truck driver accused of opening fire at a Unitarian church, killing two people, left behind a note suggesting that he targeted the congregation out of hatred for its liberal policies, including its acceptance of gays, authorities said Monday.

A four-page letter found in Jim D. Adkisson's small SUV indicated he intentionally targeted the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church because, the police chief said, "he hated the liberal movement" and was upset with "liberals in general as well as gays."

Adkisson, a 58-year-old truck driver on the verge of losing his food stamps, had 76 rounds with him when he entered the church and pulled a shotgun from a guitar case during a children's performance of the musical "Annie."

Speaking as a member of a UU church, I am appalled at the actions of Jim Adkisson; but I am also so proud to hear that a member of the Knoxville UU church was responsible for tackling Adkisson before he could do more killing - AND that he did so without brandishing a gun himself. The gun nuts in America would have you believe that we all need to carry concealed weapons if any of us are to be safe. However, a group of men were able to wrestle Adkisson into submission without any firearms themselves.

I also can't help feeling that as liberal churches and rationalists and humanists push back on centuries of patriarchal fundamentalism, patriarchal fundamentalism will push back, the only way it knows how: with violence.

Debbie does DiffEq

XKCD explains perfectly:

AP

Sixteen years after Barbie dolls declared, "Math class is tough!" girls are proving that when it comes to math they are just as tough as boys. In the largest study of its kind, girls measured up to boys in every grade, from second through 11th. The research was released Thursday in the journal Science.

Parents and teachers persist in thinking boys are simply better at math, said Janet Hyde, the University of Wisconsin-Madison researcher who led the study. And girls who grow up believing it wind up avoiding harder math classes.

"It keeps girls and women out of a lot of careers, particularly high-prestige, lucrative careers in science and technology," Hyde said.

That's changing, though slowly.

Women are now earning 48 percent of undergraduate college degrees in math; they still lag far behind in physics and engineering.

But in primary and secondary school, girls have caught up, with researchers attributing that advance to increasing numbers of girls taking advanced math classes such as calculus...

Still, while there are fewer women in science and technology, there are more women in college overall. To Hyde and her colleagues, that helps explain why girls consistently score lower on average on the SAT: More of them take the test, which is needed to get into college. The highest-performing students of both genders take the test, but more girls lower on the achievement scale take it, skewing the average.

For the class of 2007, the latest figures available, boys scored an average of 533 on the math section of the SAT, compared with 499 for girls.

On the ACT, another test on which girls lag slightly, the gender gap disappeared in Colorado and Illinois once state officials required all students to take the test.

No f(*#ing duh! And still the stereotypes persist. I overhear moms all the time, "well, you know, boyz ARE better at math, tee hee..."

Please, men and women, get your facts and equations and statistics straight. And Catharine, if you find this post when you're a teen, remember Mom believes that you can excel at whatever you take up and care about.

Wall Street Got Drunk

...and Americans get to pick up the bar bill.


What a typical right-wing "no regulation" way to look at this. "Oh dear, something bad happened, too bad. Next story?" Instead of doing it ON CAMERA and saying squarely, "we have failed to protect investors, failed to protect the taxpayer. WE HAVE FAILED. We have learned our lesson. From now on, we will avoid passing legislation like the Enron Loophole, which allowed these derivatives to be traded with very little accountability..."

Crackergate

OK - I've restrained myself from posting on this whole "just a cracker" controversy, but it just goes on and on. To summarize:

1) College kid (Webster Cook) takes communion wafer (i.e., "cracker") from a Catholic church service to show his friend

2) Catholic league spews fire and brimstone about the "theft" of the body of Christ

3) Catholics send death threats to kid and threaten to remove him from his student body government and/or university (University of South Florida)

4) PZ Myers at Pharyngula posts about the Catholic League's overreaction.

5) PZ Myers get death threats and calls for his firing from the University of Minnesota - Morris

6) Someone under the name mkroll writes an email to PZ threatening to "beat his brains in" if he does not resign

7) PZ posts death threat message and all headers

8) Employee at 1800FLowers (originating email server) gets fired. Turns out her husband wrote the email in question

9) Story will not go away because Catholics don't seem to get that it's perfectly OK for someone to believe differently than you believe - even to the point of disrespecting your beliefs. If I believe the curtains in my room are magical fairy clothes and should be respected as such, you are under no compunction to believe same. Even should you come to my house and be instructed that they are magical fairy clothes. If you take my curtains and cut them up or spill paint on them to show your disrespect, I can ask you to leave my home. I cannot legally make death threats against you.

You may argue that I can prosecute you for damage to personal property. That may be true in the case of my curtains. But since Catholics believe that the cracker is the actual body of Christ, I doubt those charges would apply, as no one can "own" another's body in our country.

Anywho, whole lotta noise, just because some people starting making death threats instead of realizing that in America we are all free to have our own beliefs, so long as we do not act in opposition to the laws of the country/state/county/city in question.

STAY AWAY FROM MY CURTAINS!

More distortions at play in Minnesota Race

Gee, what a surprise. Here's a clip from a local MN news show showing the distortions and outright lies that a group, Orwellianly named "Coalition for a Democratic Workplace", produced. It lies about Norm Coleman and Al Franken. It carries on the stereotype that all unions are mob-run enterprises.



Franken would be a strong progressive voice in the Senate, so of course all the business interests are dumping money into Coleman's campaign and into these distorted ads via front groups like "Coalition for a Democratic Workplace." Hey guys, if you really want a democratic workplace, how about letting the workers vote for the CEO's salary level? Huh? What? Not a good idea. Yeah, I thought not.

Donate to Franken here. Every little bit helps and it shows the politicians that you can live ANYWHERE and still influence an election. You know, just like the mbillionaires do.

McCain economic advisor Gramm: Kwitcherbitchin!

Wash Times

We have sort of become a nation of whiners," he said. "You just hear this constant whining, complaining about a loss of competitiveness, America in decline" despite a major export boom that is the primary reason that growth continues in the economy, he said.

This is priceless. Foreclosure Phil, the McCain "advisor" responsible for the Enron Loophole (along with wife Wendy Gramm, head of the CFTC at the time of the institution of the Enron loophole) and the housing meltdown tells Americans STFU. We're doing great. See those high food and oil prices, they mean nothing! See your 401K and home values in the toilet, stop complaining! Globalization works!

"We've never been more dominant; we've never had more natural advantages than we have today," he said. "We have benefited greatly" from the globalization of the economy in the last 30 years.

If by "we" he means the corporate owners of America - and I don't mean the piddly ass owners of a few pieces of stock in a pension, I mean the MAJORITY OWNERS and CEOs, then yes "we" have benefited greatly from globalization.

If by "we" he means the average American, then he is stupid as well as cruel and uncaring.

Read the Mother Jones piece. Seriously. Then donate to anyone who will get these political leeches out of the system. If you're not willing to lay down $25, $50, $100 bucks, whatever you can afford, you will get pwned by the corpo-interests who will continue to dismantle the constitution and push more and more of us out of jobs, out of homes and into something very like indentured servitude. It could happen. If people don't start to care, it will.

But, but, but, timetables mean the terraists "win", right?

AFP

Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said on Monday he is negotiating a deal with Washington that will for the first time set a timetable for a withdrawal of foreign forces as part of a framework for a US troop presence into next year.[..]

US President George W. Bush has repeatedly refused to set a timetable for a US withdrawal, and administration officials linked any change to conditions on the ground.

"It is important to understand that these are not talks on a hard date for a withdrawal," said White House spokesman Scott Stanzell.

"As Ambassador Crocker has said, we are looking at conditions, and not calendars -- and both sides are in agreement on this point," he added.

But, but, but Bush and McSame swear up and down that there'll be no timetables; "'timetables' is a buzzword for withdrawal." I also seem to recall Kerry trying to tie US troop withdrawals to conditions/milestones/checkpoints -- pick your favorite buzzword again. And again it was "don't you want to WIN?" "Kerry wants us to withdraw before we WIN!!!"

Now, lo and behold, al-Maliki is discussing timetables for US troop withdrawal. I don't see McSame jumping up and down. I don't see Bush whining "but Nuri, don't you want to WIN?"

Same hypocrisy, different day.

Faulty product may be to blame for Burner fire

SeaTimes

[Congressional candidate Darcy] Burner, her husband and their 5-year-old son were home asleep when the 7 a.m. fire broke out, but they escaped unharmed.

She is in a tight race in the 8th Congressional District against U.S. Rep. Dave Reichert, R-Auburn, who narrowly won re-election in a 2006 contest with Burner. The campaign will go on as Burner picks up the pieces and copes with the details of her loss, her spokesman, Sandeep Kaushik, said.

"I am today focused on my family and just really grateful that my family is OK," Burner said. "Tomorrow I'll wake up and figure out what comes next."

Fire investigators said the blaze was caused by a malfunctioning electrical device that was plugged into an outlet in a bedroom, said Sgt. John Urquhart of the King County Sheriff's Office. Burner said a faulty lamp in her son's room apparently was to blame.

To donate to Darcy's campaign click here

Darcy's the real deal. A progressive in our own backyard. Here's wishing the entire Burner family well and hoping that they recover and move on with their lives in peace.