“The NSA’s gathering of phone call records of millions of Americans is “something that would make the late Leonid Brezhnev proud of Bush—and [Gen.] Michael Hayden, the Pentagon apparatchik, who saw it through,” Buzzflash writes in an editorial.
That’s the conclusion of a Washington Post article that tracks “a decline in support from almost every part of the conservative coalition over the past year.”
Fifty-two percent of respondents said they’re leaning toward Democratic candidates in the midterm elections, while only 38% are leaning Republican, according to a CNN poll.
There has been a “significant increase” in the proportion of teens and young adults engaging in such acts during the last decade, according to STD clinics in Baltimore.
Check out this fantastic review of Colbert’s performance, including this: “It was perhaps the first time in Bush’s tenure that the president was forced to sit and listen to any American cite the litany of criminal and corruption allegations that have piled up against his administration.”
In lieu of having anything really important to do, the Senate just approved a resolution stating that the national anthem, the Pledge and citizenship oaths should be sung or spoken in English.
After the vice president’s daughter called him a “son of a bitch” for mentioning her sexuality during a 2004 debate, John Kerry retorts that Mary Cheney “flacked for the most anti-gay administration in history.” Amen.
The co-founder of MoveOn.org and another author argue that mothers need to fight against the wage gap and lack of professional support for moms in American society. (book excerpt)
Hispanics account for 49 percent of the country’s growth from 2004 to 2005, and 70 percent of the growth in children younger than 5, according to a new census report.
Ray McGovern, the CIA veteran who publicly challenged Donald Rumsfeld last week, tells Buzz Flash in an in-depth interview that the canned applause that accompanied Rumsfeld’s lies reminded McGovern of Cold War-era Russia.
Former FEMA director Michael “Heckuva Job” Brown told an aide he was “sitting in the chair, putting mousse in my hair” as he waited for a media interview immediately after the Aug. 29 disaster began. He also disputed that levees quickly broke—despite getting reports to that effect.
The 37-year-old former Rhodes scholar, who is black, won in a landslide. (His last mayoral campaign was the focus of the Oscar-nominated “Street Fight.”)
Bush’s 31% rating (which echoes a USA Today/Gallup poll) equals the low-water mark of his father’s presidency, and is the third-lowest approval rating of any president in the last 50 years.
On May 9, 1960, the FDA approved Enovid, the first birth control pill, for clinical use. Many court cases, a sexual revolution and a fundamentalist backlash later, use of and access to contraceptives is still very much a hot-button issue in the U.S. Read a roundup of information and opinion relating to the release of an explosive report last week connecting a spike in unwanted pregnancies among the poor to decreased contraceptive use. (h/t: Feministing)
REPORT: A Tale of Two Americas for Women: The Contraception-Abortion Connection press release | PDF (Guttmacher Institute)
The youth is signed up for dangerous front-line service, but did not even know there was a war going on until last fall—after he was approached by the recruiter. An internal Army investigation is underway, but such recruiting abuses are systemic. (Via Bring It On!)
Addicted to Nonsense
