Ned Lamont, the neophyte antiwar Democrat who is challenging Sen. Joe Lieberman for his seat in Conn., easily garnered enough votes to force a primary with Lieberman--who is Bush’s favorite Democrat.
This is a big deal. Lieberman is in trouble. If you want to learn more about Lamont, check out the Truthdig interview.
Father Marcial Maciel Degollado, 86, is the most prominent priest yet to be disciplined for allegedly molesting young members of the Church. But because of his advanced age, he’s getting only a slap on the wrist--a demand that he give up his ministry in favor of a quiet life of “prayer and penitence.”
Assuming the allegations are true, good riddance.
A United Nations panel on torture isn’t buying President Bush’s assurances that America does not send suspected terrorists to countries known for using torture to extract information. The panel also recommended the closing of America’s Guantanamo military prison in Cuba.
Justice Antonin Scalia told fellow conservatives on Capitol Hill to butt out of the Supreme Court’s business in regards to using foreign law in its constitutional rulings. “It’s none of your business,” he said during a speech.
The Arizona senator got heavily jeered during his commencement address for a New York university. One student banner read, “Our commencement is not your platform.”
Salon writer Rebecca Traister examines why today’s most prominent young female role models seem to be “jiggly video stars, boobie-flashing twits, half-clad clotheshorses and label-whoring anorexics.” (Reg. or advert. req’d.)
As the White House’s campaign against Iran heats up, the Campaign for Peace and Democracy is gathering signatures in support of its statement “IRAN: Neither U.S. Aggression nor Theocratic Repression.”
In this time of record profits for oil companies, the House approved a measure to withdraw a $7-billion subsidy over the next five years. Unbelievably, 165 Republicans wanted to let the oil companies keep the public’s money.
The BBC takes a look at the philosophy of the show: “It’s not that the Simpsons is atheist propaganda; its main target is not belief in God or the supernatural, but the arrogance of particular organised religions that they, amazingly, know the will of the creator.”
In the last 10 months, as the violence has continued unabated, Iraq has issued new passports to 1.85 million Iraqis, 7% of the population and a quarter of the country’s middle class.
Next time you’re stuck in gridlock, keep in mind that many American cities had fantastic public rail systems until Big Auto bought up all the tracks and scrapped them to make way for cars. The Observer reminds us that “it did not have to be like this.”
The Airbus A380, the world’s largest airliner, touched down for the first time at London’s Heathrow Airport on May 18. It can carry 800 passengers, nearly 400 more than the Boeing 747. It has a lounge, fully reclining bed-chairs, a shopping area and a bar.
That’s what Gen. Hayden said about the prewar Iraq intelligence failures. But there was no contrition for the domestic wiretapping activities he oversaw at the NSA. In contrast, he strongly defended the programs.
Well, now that he’s taken responsibility, at least we know what we’re in for if he gets confirmed.
The N.Y. Times’ foreign affairs columnist has been saying that “the next six months” in Iraq will be the “decisive” ones--for the last two and a half years. FAIR documents a “long series of similar do-or-die dates that never seem to get any closer.”
Gen. Michael Hayden bemoaned the “endless picking apart” of CIA operations in the news media during today’s confirmation hearing on his nomination to head the intelligence agency.
If the architect of the NSA domestic wiretapping program gets this promotion, it will be like a Jon Stewart joke gone horribly wrong.
After a Senate committee approved a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage, Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., strode out of the room, and Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., bid him “good riddance.”
The senior official in Bush’s reelection campaign got 10 months for his part in a phone-jamming scheme to keep New Hampshire Democrats from voting in a 2002 election.
The Democratic chairman, speaking on Pat Robertson’s network, said that the Dems’ platform declares “marriage is between a man and a woman"--when, in fact, it doesn’t. Gay rights groups are angry.
Update: Pat Robertson, by the say, said that God told him that America would be hit by tsunamis in 2006.
OK, Dean misspoke, but what a sad commentary that he was having a serious conversation with a delusional hate-monger like Robertson, anyway.
Current law in Black Jack, Mo., prohibits more than three people from living together unless they are related by “blood, marriage or adoption.” The City Council rejected amending that law to include unmarried couples with children.
We’re speechless.
Some of the warlords we are supporting--purportedly to keep Al Qaeda from establishing a beachhead in the African nation--were the same ones who helped to bring down American Blackhawk helicopters in 1993.
Western European teens have fewer pregnancies, and lower levels of STDs, than their American counterparts. Why? Because teens in Europe have easy access to contraceptives, confidential healthcare and comprehensive sex education. Teen sex is seen as a healthy thing. (Compare that to America’s puritanical, ineffective abstinence programs.)
The Senate has voted to build 370 miles of triple-layer fencing along the Mexico border, but also has endorsed a chance at citizenship for millions of illegal immigrants.
Interesting mixed message, but perhaps the best that could be hoped for, given the political climate.
A think tank bankrolled in part by oil companies has launched a disinformation campaign against Gore’s “global warming alarmism” in his movie “An Inconvenient Truth.”
Chevron in the White House
