Posts from — September 2006

freedominfo.org: the online network of freedom of information advocates:
International Right to Know Day 2006
Celebrating
Freedom of Information Around the World
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hmmm, i missed this.

Erwin Chemerinsky – Legislating Violations of the Constitution – washingtonpost.com:
With little public attention or even notice, the House of Representatives has passed a bill that undermines enforcement of the First Amendment’s separation of church and state. The Public Expression of Religion Act – H.R. 2679 – provides that attorneys who successfully challenge government actions as violating the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment shall not be entitled to recover attorneys fees. The bill has only one purpose: to prevent suits challenging unconstitutional government actions advancing religion.

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hmm, yet one more reason to change the house of representatives, vote the people who want a theocracy out.

Who the Hell Wants to be Reasonable?

this has Emma Goldman’s answers to:

1. What should you most like to do, to know, to be? (In case you are not satisfied).
2. Why wouldn’t you change places with any other human being?
3. What do you look forward to?
4. What do you fear most from the future?
5. What has been the happiest moment of your life? The unhappiest? (If you care to tell).
6. What do you consider your weakest characteristics? Your strongest? What do you like most about yourself? Dislike most?
7. What things do you really like? Dislike? (Nature, people, ideas, objects, etc. Answer in a phrase or a page, as you will).
8. What is your attitude toward art today?
9. What is your world view? (Are you a reasonable being in a reasonable scheme?)
10. Why do you go on living?

Your Meat is Smarter Than Your Pet.:
From the website:

Testing the IQ of a sheep may seem laughable. But at the Babraham Institute in Cambridge, England, they know better. One sheep who got a reward every time she recognized a human face correctly on a video screen scored a perfect 50 out of 50.

Link
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definitely more skilled….

Daily Kos: ESPN FAKED STADIUM CHEERS FOR BUSH SR.:
For several years, ESPN has been manufacturing fake cheers and fake boos for politicians. It’s a very simple rule. If you are a Democrat not named Joe Lieberman, ESPN will play a tape of boos previously recorded and insert them into the audio after the Democrat is announced. If you are a Republican and ESPN is expecting boos, ESPN will play a pre-recorded tape of cheers unrelated to the Republican.
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objective journalism… it does not exist, it should.. but it does not. this is a horrible debasement of sports…

we take it back – tribe.net:
It’s a new day for Tribe.net.

Thanks to recent management changes, we, the employees, are taking back the site and are happy to announce some real improvements (based upon the
tons
of
feedback
you’ve
given
us).

Here’s what’s changing with today’s release:

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tribe will be more tribe! yay

Line Rider – beta by ~fsk on deviantART:

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you draw a line, there is a little guy on the sled… he sleds down the line…. then.. at the end, he has either crashed, or, he falls off the end of the line and spins off into the Sartrian existentialist fugue.

Are We Really So Fearful? – washingtonpost.com:
Can’t the United States see that when we allow someone to be tortured by our agents, it is not only the victim and the perpetrator who are corrupted, not only the “intelligence” that is contaminated, but also everyone who looked away and said they did not know, everyone who consented tacitly to that outrage so they could sleep a little safer at night, all the citizens who did not march in the streets by the millions to demand the resignation of whoever suggested, even whispered, that torture is inevitable in our day and age, that we must embrace its darkness?
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well… can we. This has been my ongoing argument on torture for many posts… do you really want to be the nation, the person in the nation, that approves of torture? where does torture stop? it does not stop. one day you will wake up and realize that someone tortured a full grown man, someone tortured a full grown women and you will be shocked that someone tortured a child. But there is no difference in torture, the idea is that torture is about knowledge, and children and parents, and everyone have knowledge. If you think, for one minute, that only evil people will be tortured, you are wrong, there is no border between good an evil that torturers will not cross to ’save lives’.

Shame and Horror:

First option, block this horror — filibuster if needed — and risk paying a political price: For a taste of the ‘vote for us or die’ campaign that’s in the works, see this utterly repulsive ad already being run by Rep. Nancy Johnson (R-CT). And recall that Johnson is supposedly one of the nicer Republicans (and a new friend of Sen. Lieberman’s).

Second option, do the usual infective stuff and pay a different political price (the base will turn on you, as will anyone else with some decency). Plus earn a black spot in history.
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that is a horribly misleading ad, i’m sure we will see worse… i think it should be countered with one that goes like this… ‘nanna is calling her grandson fighting in afganistan, she tells him about some of her new medicines with opiates in them and giving one to her husband, the fbi are at her door…, the call was intercepted, the law was broken…. should there have been a warrant? nancy johnson says no.

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i am also ashamed that any senator or congressman would support a pro-torture stance. i think someone should really explain to them about the reality of torture and how, if the enemy knows we torture, they fight harder, more viciously and with less respect for us as human beings.

Tucson Weekly :

:
Halliburton, the notorious U.S. energy company, sold key nuclear-reactor components to a private Iranian oil company called Oriental Oil Kish as recently as 2005, using offshore subsidiaries to circumvent U.S. sanctions, journalist Jason Leopold reported on Globalresearch.ca, the Web site of a Canadian research group. He cited sources intimate with the business dealings of Halliburton and Kish.

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i wonder why this didn’t make it into the public view….