State education board approves science standards
by Laura Heinauer
New standards remove specific references to age of the universe.The State Board of Education on Friday passed science curriculum standards that members described as a compromise between those who are critical of teaching evolutionary theories without scrutiny and those who feared attacks on evolution would lead to the teaching of creationism in Texas schools. |
Anti-Palin bloggers: Fox News threatening to 'ambush' us
by Muriel Kane
Alaskan blogger Linda Kellen Biegel, who blogs as Celtic Diva, charged on Friday that "Faux News is in Alaska and stalking complaint-filers!"Biegel is one of a number of progressive bloggers who have recently filed a series of ethics complaints against Governor Sarah Palin. She says that she has been receiving "vitriolic" emails from Palin supporters ever since. |
FAA seeks to hide bird strike facts from public
by Michael J. Sniffen
The Federal Aviation Administration is proposing to keep secret from travelers its vast records on where and how often commercial planes are damaged by hitting flying birds.The government agency argued that some carriers and airports would stop reporting incidents for fear the public would misinterpret the data and hold it against them. The reporting is voluntary because the FAA rejected a National Transportation Safety Board recommendation 10 years ago to make it mandatory. |
That's No Angry Mob, It's a Movement
by Michael Winship
A college friend of mine, after much quaffing from the keg, so to speak, would start singing a faux hymn that began, "We are sliding into sin -- whee!"I've thought of his bleary tune from time to time as we all watched our financial institutions slide from thoughtless, wretched excess into calamity, aided and abetted by deregulation and bailouts, dragging the rest of us along on their speed bump-free ride. |
Needed: A New Commission to Probe Corporate Crime
by Danny Schechter
Why Hasn’t Obama Targeted The Ongoing White Collar Crime Wave?Another day. Another ponzi scheme.This time it's the Millennium Bank in the Eastern Caribbean accused of a mere $65 million dollar rip off. (Ponzi king Bernard Madoff allegedly took in $65 billion.) Regulators say there is a "ponzimonium" underway with scores of newly opened investigations. We are talking about pervasive institutional crime, not just individual theft. |
Welcome to Vietnam, Mr. President
by Ray McGovern
I was wrong. I had been saying that it would be naïve to take too seriously presidential candidate Barack Obama's rhetoric regarding the need to escalate the war in Afghanistan. I kept thinking to myself that when he got briefed on the history of Afghanistan and the oft proven ability of Afghan "militants" to drive out foreign invaders-from Alexander the Great, to the Persians, the Mongolians, Indians, British, Russians-he would be sure to understand why they call mountainous Afghanistan the "graveyard of empires." |
Some Strategists Cast Doubt on Afghan War Rationale
by Gareth Porter
WASHINGTON - The argument for deeper U.S. military commitment to the Afghan War invoked by President Barack Obama in his first major policy statement on Afghanistan and Pakistan Friday - that al Qaeda must be denied a safe haven in Afghanistan - has been not been subjected to public debate in Washington. |
Police Trying to 'Smear' Peaceful G20 Protests
by Brendan Bourne
LONDON - Organisers of some of the protests planned in London over the next week to coincide with the G20 summit have complained that police briefings have given the impression that demonstrations will be mounted by anarchists intent on causing trouble. |
How to Train a Governor
by Gail Collins
This week, a survey taken by Siena College’s Research Institute found that Gov. David Paterson of New York had a positive job-approval rating of 19 percent. That’s amazing. As George Bush has demonstrated, you can pretty much destroy an entire country and more than a quarter of the public will still insist you did an O.K. job. |
Foreign Affairs: the nitty gritty on Afpak
by Aimee Kligman
If you don't read the Washington Times, you may not know Arnaud de Borchgrave. But his resume is far wider and weightier than editor- at- large for this news source, and for UPI as well. Wikipedia has a good snapshot of his many talents as they relate to international matters. |
Lost History Hurts Obama's Iran Bid
by Robert Parry
President Barack Obama and Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei spoke past each other in a recent exchange partly because both countries nurse historical grievances against the other and neither has fully acknowledged that mutual history dating back three decades. |
Townhall Talk and a New Way Forward
by David Swanson
Obama's Thursday "town hall" featuring questions submitted online produced some interesting comments from our president. In response to a question from college students he explained that making student loans directly from the government, without passing them through banks and giving profits to banks from public money, makes more sense. But he claimed that giving far more money than we've ever loaned to students to banks in hopes that they will loan it to businesses is the only way to save our economy. |
Tomgram: William Astore, Affirming Our Prime Directive
by Tom Engelhardt
— from TomDispatchOkay, the new Star Trek film -- you know, the prequel with space sex -- is premiering in Australia. Go figure. All I know is I'm not beaming there. On the other hand, I've already been in close communication with a Trekkie pal, and she and I have chosen our night here in New York. May 14th. See you then. (I'll be the one wearing the TomDispatch hat.) |
Obama Bailout Plan Not the Right's Cup of Tea
by Bill Berkowitz
OAKLAND, California, Mar 25 (IPS) - In December of 1773, colonists in Boston - then a town in the British colony of Massachusetts - protested against the British government after officials in Boston refused to return three shiploads of taxed tea to Britain. |
The Real Crime in the Bailout - Naked CDS Deals
by Cenk Uygur
The size of our national economy this year is roughly $15 trillion. The size of the Credit Default Swaps (CDS) market is $64 trillion. The whole world GDP is about $56 trillion. How could the CDS market be larger than the world GDP combined? That doesn't make any sense. |
High-Tech Luddites and Stupid Number Tricks
by RJ Eskow
Guess what? That volcano in Alaska just exploded again - twice, in fact. The Associated Press reports that "the larger burst (sent) an ash cloud 65,000 feet in the air." Oh ... and the ash was "razor-sharp."No doubt critics will renew their carping about Bobby Jindal's use of "something called volcano monitoring" as a laugh line in his response to the President's speech before Congress last month. "What Congress should be monitoring is the eruption of spending in Washington," he said. Some will point out that airliners could have flown into these ash clouds had there been no monitoring, causing considerable loss of life. |
Why We Hate Them: Mistreated Customers Fuel Populist Rage
by Ted Rall
NEW YORK--"Populist anger in America is the anger of dispossession," writes Newsweek's Rick Perlstein. "The delinking of effort and reward has become all too manifest. That always makes Americans angry. We do not like to reward those who do not produce." |
AIG Exec Whines About Public Anger, and Now We're Supposed to Pity Him? Yeah, Right
by Matt Taibbi
"I take this action after 11 years of dedicated, honorable service to AIG. I can no longer effectively perform my duties in this dysfunctional environment, nor am I being paid to do so. Like you, I was asked to work for an annual salary of $1, and I agreed out of a sense of duty to the company and to the public officials who have come to its aid. Having now been let down by both, I can no longer justify spending 10, 12, 14 hours a day away from my family for the benefit of those who have let me down." via Op-Ed Contributor -- "Dear AIG, I Quit!" -- NYTimes.com |
Police report: ShamWow guy punched prostitute
by Miami Herald
Vince Schlomi, the ShamWow guy, was arrested in South Beach after punching a prostitute at the Setai last month, the Smoking Gun is reporting.The police report said Vince punched the prostitute in the face several times after she allegedly "bit his tongue and wouldn't let go." He allegedly paid $1,000 for "straight sex." |
