Collective Sigh

Abstinence-only sex education programs, a major plank in President Bush's education plan, have had no impact on teenagers' behavior in his home state of Texas, according to a new study.

Despite taking courses emphasizing abstinence-only themes, teenagers in 29 high schools became increasingly sexually active, mirroring the overall state trends, according to the study conducted by researchers at Texas A&M University.

"State of Union speech could have war theme"

"Past wartime presidents have framed it as enemy vs. us"

It is believed that Sir Nichol was connected with Wallace through the Hallidays. Thomas Halliday was a nephew of Wallace, and a friend of Rothirforde. Previous to the Battle of Biggar, as narrated by Harry the Minstrel, Halliday brought his uncle a welcome contingent of three hundred "wee armed" warriors from Annandale, led by "twa gud sonnis, Wallas and Rudyrfurd " Among the chiefs who remained faithful to Wallace was "gud Rudyrfurd, chyftaynlik" with a lordly air, who with sixty followers held his ground against the English in Ettrick Forest.

Sir Nichol de Rothirforde held considerable land located in several different counties. His land of Doddington Mill in Northumberland was seized by the English King in 1296 as Sir Nichol was declared a rebel.

Depending on the circumstances, he told the intelligence agency, some coercive methods could be legal, but he advised against others, the officials said.

This is a very dangerous winter weather situation. Travel in the warning area is not recommended from later this morning through Sunday afternoon. If you leave the safety of indoors... you are putting your life at risk. Accumulations of ice may result in widespread power outages. Preparations should be completed as soon as possible. Be sure you have enough fuel for alternate heating sources such as gas heaters and fireplaces. Make sure that any space heaters or candles are kept well away from flammable objects... and keep them out of the reach of children. Stock up on batteries and have flashlights handy. Be sure you have enough medicine and food that does not require cooking or refrigeration.

In a sign of the political dangers surrounding President Bush's plans for Social Security, a number of congressional Republicans said Thursday that their constituents had received anonymous, automated phone calls accusing the lawmakers of trying to damage the government retirement program by "privatizing" it.

House Republicans said the calls, which they labeled a "tele-scare campaign," had been made in more than a dozen congressional districts from Connecticut to Florida.

(snip)

On Capitol Hill, Republicans were outraged.

"They won't even identify themselves," Greg Crist, a spokesman for the House Republican Conference, said of the unknown backer of the phone campaign. "At the very least, they ought to fess up."

...the deal African-Americans get from Social Security turns out, according to various calculations, to be either about the same as that for whites or somewhat better. Hispanics, by the way, clearly do better than either.

Democrats should speak with conviction about an issue that has always animated them: the alleviation of poverty. "I think it is a moral issue; it's something we should be willing to fight about and stand up for," he says.

Those who counsel caution, he says, would let calculation push Democrats away from their historical commitments. "They think it's associated with some political label," he says, carefully avoiding the L-word himself. "They think that a lot of people who live in poverty don't vote and don't participate and so they don't think there's a lot of political capital there."

Edwards, who is planning to set up a center to study ways to alleviate poverty, is enough of a politician to insist that he wants to advocate not only on behalf of the destitute but also for those just finding their footing on mobility's ladder. But he offers the unexpected claim that the very voters who have strayed from the Democrats would respond forcefully to the moral imperative of aiding the poor.

"The people who love their guns and love their faith, they care about this," Edwards says. "There is a deep abiding feeling of moral responsibility people have about those who are doing everything right and are still having a hard time."

Has anyone on this application ever had sinusitis?

Mr. President: I have always believed that our responsibility to advise and consent does not mean that we have to agree with every opinion or every action that the nominee has ever taken, but that that nominee deserves the benefit of the doubt and that our responsibility is to determine whether the nominee is fit for the position for which the President has nominated him or her and whether the nominee, in our judgment, will serve in the national interest. And I conclude that Dr. Condoleezza Rice meets that standard, at least, and much more.

Secondly, this element of the context in which this nomination is put before us: we are at war. It is a war unlike any we have ever fought before. And here I speak of the world war with Islamic terrorism. It is joined on battlefield in places like Iraq, of course, but it is being fought in the shadows and corners against an enemy that is driven by a fanaticism and acts without regard to human life – others’ or their own.

I embrace the best tradition of American foreign policy that always has said that partisanship should end at the nation’s shores. And note that it doesn’t say policy differences should end. It doesn’t say ideological differences should end. It says partisanship should end at the nation’s shores, particularly so when our nation is engaged in a war – a global war on terrorism, a war in Iraq in which Americans have already lost their lives in the cause of freedom and in protection of our security.

The nomination of a Secretary of State in a second term of a president naturally is an opportunity, appropriately, for people to raise questions about the foreign policy of that Administration. But in the final analysis I hope it is also an opportunity around this very qualified nominee for us to come together and say to one another and to the world – both our enemies and our allies – that in the final analysis Americans will stand together, shoulder to shoulder, against terrorism – against the enemy – in pursuit of the freedom and liberty and opportunity that Dr. Rice spoke of in her opening statement before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and that President Bush spoke to in his Inaugural Address last week.

One of the great strengths that Condoleezza Rice will bring to the office of Secretary of State is that the world knows that she has the President’s trust and confidence and I respect the right of any of my colleagues to reach a different decision today and to oppose this nomination. But I hope and believe that the Senate today, across partisan lines, will resoundingly endorse this nomination and send the message to friend and foe alike that while we have our disagreements, ultimately what unites us around this very qualified nominee in this hour of war is much greater than what divides us.

In times like these it is important that the world not only knows that this Secretary of State has the ear of the President, but that she has – if you will allow me to put it this way – America’s heart. A heart that beats with the freedom and security and opportunity that we dream of for our own people and for the people of the world.

In August 2001, the Bush Administration set a new policy for federal funding of embryonic stem cell research. President Bush declared that federal research funds could only be used on embryonic stem cell lines created before that date; at the time, several of the President’s scientific advisors believed that there were approximately 78 viable cell lines in existence and they would be sufficient for investigators to advance the embryonic stem cell field. President Bush argued that his new policy would prevent the creation and subsequent destruction of new embryos solely for the purpose of extracting stem cells. Moreover, in August 2001, researchers only had the technology to grow human embryonic stem cells using mouse “feeder cell” lines, therefore all the lines covered under the President’s policy are contaminated with mouse cells or mouse cell products. (link)

(emphasis mine)

The United States has still only spent a small portion of the $18.4 billion (9.8 billion pounds) it set aside for rebuilding Iraq and is being forced to reallocate funding from some projects because of the poor security situation, a new government report shows.

According to a copy of the Bush administration's latest quarterly update to Congress on Iraq obtained by Reuters on Thursday, as of December 29 only $2.2 billion of the funds had actually been spent.

Bill Pullman (President): I don't understand, where does all this come from? How do you get funding for something like this?

Judd Hirsch (Julius Levinson): You don't actually think they spend $20,000.00 on a hammer, $30,000.00 on a toilet seat do you?

Pentagon officials said they established the Strategic Support Branch using "reprogrammed" funds, without explicit congressional authority or appropriation.

Nixon biographer Jonathan Aitken said the two hit it off immediately. Nixon, elected to the Senate in 1950, hired Woods as his secretary.

"She was intelligent, literate, clamlike in her discretion. Technically superb, she possessed the high-speed skills of shorthand and typing necessary to keep up with her boss's often frantic and always demanding schedule," Aitken wrote.

(snip)

She denied she caused the full 181/2-minute gap, testifying later that she inadvertently erased four or five minutes. The phone rang while she was transcribing the tape, she said.

She accidentally hit the record button. A picture in which she demonstrated her action -- stretching one foot forward while reaching back to get the phone -- became one of the most famous images of the era.

Parade performers will have security escorts to the bathroom, and they've been ordered not to look directly at President Bush or make any sudden movements while passing the reviewing stand.

Over the objections of many of its own employees, the Social Security Administration is gearing up for a major effort to publicize the financial problems of Social Security and to convince the public that private accounts are needed as part of any solution.

More cost-cutting companies are hiring workers in other countries to do jobs formerly held by U.S. employees. But in a painful twist, some employers are asking the workers they're laying off to train their foreign replacements — having them dig their own unemployment graves.

"Popular"

When I see depressing creatures
With unprepossessing features
I remind them on their own behalf to think of
Celebrated heads of state or specially great communicators
Did they have brains or knowledge?
Don't make me laugh!

They were popular!
Please - it's all about popular!
It's not about aptitude
It's the way you're viewed
So it's very shrewd to be
Very very popular like me!

(full lyrics here)

"No Good Deed"

Unlimited; the damage is unlimited
To everyone I've tried to help or tried to love
And, oh, Fiyero, you're the latest
Victim of my greatest achievement
In a long career of distress
Every time I could, I tried making good
And what I made was a mess!
No good deed goes unpunished
No act of charity goes unresented
No good deed goes unpunished
That's my new creed;
My road of good intentions
Led where such roads always lead
No good deed goes unpunished!

(full lyrics here)

"Sometimes, words have consequences you don't intend them to mean," Bush said Thursday.

A U.S. judge on Thursday ordered a Georgia school district to remove stickers challenging the theory of evolution from its textbooks on the grounds that they violated the U.S. Constitution.

Colombia on Wednesday invited the world's bounty hunters to scour its jungles and mountains and drag back rebel chiefs in return for cash rewards.

"It would be great if all the bounty hunters in the world came to capture those bandits. The money's there for them, and the rewards are good," Vice President Francisco Santos told reporters.

A Romanian couple named their son Yahoo as a sign of gratitude for meeting over the Internet, a Bucharest newspaper said Thursday.

Daily Libertatea said Cornelia and Nonu Dragoman, both from Transylvania, met and decided they were meant for each other following a three-month relationship over the net.

Politicians in one Australian state have been asked to lend a hand and become sperm donors to help arrest dwindling supplies at an in-vitro fertilization clinic.

The Monash IVF clinic has written to 25 parliamentarians aged under 45 in Victoria state asking them to set an example for the rest of the male population by becoming sperm donors.

"We hope that if some of the leading role models within our community become donors, others may follow suit," the Monash letter said.

A Connecticut woman who was artificially inseminated with the wrong sperm gave birth to a healthy baby boy, her attorney said on Wednesday.

Laura Howard last year sued an infertility clinic in Bridgeport, Connecticut, after her doctor informed her that she had mistakenly been injected with sperm from a man who is not her fiance, lawyer Bruce Jacobs said.

American Army soldiers are deserting and fleeing to Canada rather than fight in Iraq, rekindling memories of the thousands of draft-dodgers who flooded north to avoid service in Vietnam.

An estimated 5,500 men and women have deserted since the invasion of Iraq, reflecting Washington's growing problems with troop morale.

The Pentagon says that the level of desertion is no higher than usual and denies that it is having difficulty persuading troops to fight. The flight to Canada is, however, an embarrassment for the military, which is suffering from a recruiting shortfall for the National Guard and the Army Reserves.

Kaiser's Altman said small businesses are bearing the brunt of the increases, affecting their ability to hire workers or offer benefits. The survey found that 63 percent of small businesses offer medical insurance, down from 68 percent three years ago. Kaiser based its findings on responses between January and May from 1,925 firms with at least three employees.

I swear that I have never taken money -- neither directly nor indirectly -- from any political campaign or government agency -- whether federal, state, or local -- in exchange for any service performed in my job as a journalist (or commentator, or blogger, or whatever you think I should be called).

Throughout their history, Quakers have refused to take oaths. Their belief is that one should tell the truth at all times. Taking an oath implies that there are two types of truthfulness: one for ordinary life and another for special occasions.

Gov. Jeb Bush outlined a plan Tuesday to link Florida's Medicaid program to private insurance companies that would set limits on health coverage.

D.C. officials said yesterday that the Bush administration is refusing to reimburse the District for most of the costs associated with next week's inauguration, breaking with precedent and forcing the city to divert $11.9 million from homeland security projects.

Federal officials have told the District that it should cover the expenses by using some of the $240 million in federal homeland security grants it has received in the past three years -- money awarded to the city because it is among the places at highest risk of a terrorist attack.

The clean, wide, tree-lined streets are just a sample of the "Pride in Preston." Snowmobile riding and races, fishing, hunting, camping, boating, river tubing, the famous Preston Night Rodeo, moto-cross races, car show, fair and more are all climaxed every year by the Idaho Festival of Lights celebration.

Preston was originally called Worm Creek when it was settled in 1888 because the waterways in the area resembled worms as they curved and wound their way through the countryside.

Hello:

I am Delegate Cosgrove and I wish to respond to the allegations that have been made by those who have emailed and called my office. The intent of House Bill 1677 is to require the notification of authorities of a delivery of a baby that is dead and the mother has not been attended by a medical professional. This bill was requested by the Chesapeake Police Department in its legislative package due to instances of full term babies who were abandoned shortly after birth. These poor children died horrible deaths and all that the person responsible could be charged with is the improper disposal of a human body.

The requirement for twelve hours comes from the method that a coroner would use to determine if the child had been born alive or dead. After twelve hours, it becomes next to impossible to determine if the child was alive due to decomposition gasses that build up in the body.

My bill in no way intends that a woman who suffers a miscarriage should be charged for not notifying authorities. The bill in no way mentions miscarriages, only deliveries. After discussing the bill again with our legislative services lawyers, I will include language that will define the bill to apply only to those babies that are abandoned as stated above.

I would never inflict this type of emotional torture on a woman who has suffered such a traumatic event as a miscarriage, and I am confident that the General Assembly of Virginia would also not pass such a terrible imposition on a woman.

I hope that you will understand the original intent of this bill. This bill has nothing to do with abortion, contraception and especially miscarriages. If you were alarmed by this bill or by the websites, I am sorry. I hope that this will explain the concept and intent of this bill.

Sincerely,

John A. Cosgrove

"There is a difficult mission ahead -- to build our state, to achieve security for our people, to provide a good life for our people, to give our prisoners freedom, our fugitives a life in dignity, to reach our goal of an independent state," (Mahmoud) Abbas said.

U.S. Rep. Howard Coble, a Greensboro Republican and close ally of President Bush, says the United States should consider pulling out of war-ravaged Iraq.

Coble is one of the first members of Congress to suggest a withdrawal publicly.

The 10-term congressman said in an interview with the News & Record of Greensboro that he's "fed up with picking up the newspaper and reading that we've lost another five or 10 of our young men and women in Iraq."

Support among Coble's 6th District constituents has also waned, his office said.

The dean of the state's congressional delegation said he arrived at his position only after many months of searching in vain for evidence that the Bush administration had a post-invasion strategy to deal with the transition to Iraqi self-government.

Coble, who has represented the 6th District since 1984, says he voted to give Bush sweeping war-making powers assuming the administration had a post-invasion strategy.

"If there was, I wish someone would tell me what it is or show it to me," he said. "I'd like to see it."

The congressman said he thought Bush was correct in attacking Iraq, and that he and most of his constituents still believe it was the right decision because "we've done a lot of good over there."

That includes capturing Saddam Hussein, "the international terrorist, the tyrant, the snake," he said.

But a troop withdrawal should be an option if the Iraqi government is unable or unwilling to "shoulder more of the heavy lifting" for its own security, Coble said.

There has been little or no indication that the Iraqi government can do that, he said.

"What we have are Iraqis killing Iraqis and American troops," Coble said. "All I'm saying is that a troop withdrawal ought to be an option. It ought to be placed on the table for consideration.

"I'm going to keep talking about this," he said.

Coble, chairman of the House Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security, said he may broach the idea to the panel.

The congressman from Greensboro said he is aware that few members of Congress have said openly that the country should consider withdrawing from Iraq. Republican Rep. James A. Leach of Iowa may be the only other GOP congressman to call for a pullout, he said.

"We've ignored the contributions they could have made if we'd kept them in the fold and acted very ashamed of our losses like good little Republican-dominated submissives. We should have taken a real long look at Carter and McGovern and yes, Dukakis said hey, these guys stood up for our values and have things to say and we voted for them and we're happy about it so fuck you, okay, you cat-killing, tit-covering, gay-hating freaks?"

UNITED NATIONS, New York– UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund, is requesting donors for approximately $28 million to help meet urgent health, hygiene and protection needs for women and youth in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and Maldives, the three countries hardest hit by last week’s catastrophic earthquake and tsunami.

UNFPA has offices in all the countries affected by the disaster. The Fund has been working with partners from the start to assess immediate needs, supply life-saving medicines and supplies to enable pregnant women to deliver safely, and reestablish emergency obstetric care and other urgent health services. The Fund has also provided hygiene kits – including soap, washcloths and sanitary napkins – for tens of thousands of women and their families, many of whom lost everything but the clothes on their backs. UNFPA has already made $3 million available for immediate response in all affected countries, as well as additional funds for medicines, equipment and supplies.

(Ceauscescu) began his campaign in 1966 with a decree that virtually made pregnancy a state policy. "The fetus is the property of the entire society," Ceausescu proclaimed. "Anyone who avoids having children is a deserter who abandons the laws of national continuity."

It was one of the late dictator's cruelest commands. At first Romania's birthrate nearly doubled. But poor nutrition and inadequate prenatal care endangered many pregnant women. The country's infant-mortality rate soard to 83 deaths in every 1,000 births (against a Western European average of less than 10 per thousand). About one in 10 babies was born underweight; newborns weighing 1,500 grams (3 pounds, 5 ounces) were classified as miscarriages and denied treatment. Unwanted survivors often ended up in orphanages. "The law only forbade abortion," says Dr. Alexander Floran Anca of Bucharest. "It did nothing to promote life."

Ceausescu made mockery of family planning. He forbade sex education. Books on human sexuality and reproduction were classified as "state secrets," to be used only as medical textbooks. With contraception banned, Romanians had to smuggle in condoms and birth-control pills. Though strictly illegal, abortions remained a widespread birth-control measure of last resort. Nationwide, Western sources estimate, 60 percent of all pregnancies ended in abortion or miscarriage.

The government's enforcement techniques were as bad as the law. Women under the age of 45 were rounded up at their workplaces every one to three months and taken to clinics, where they were examined for signs of pregnancy, often in the presence of government agents -- dubbed the "menstrual police" by some Romanians. A pregnant woman who failed to "produce" a baby at the proper time could expect to be summoned for questioning. Women who miscarried were suspected of arranging an abortion. Some doctors resorted for forging statistics. "If a child died in our district, we lost 10 to 25 percent of our salary," says Dr. Geta Stanescu of Bucharest. "But it wasn't our fault: we had no medicine or milk, and the families were poor."

Abortion was legal in some cases: if a woman was over 40, if she already had four children, if her life was in danger -- or, in practice, if she had Communist Party connections. Otherwise, illegal abortions cost from two to four months' wages. If something went wrong, the legal consequences were enough to deter many women from seeking timely medical help. "Usually women were so terrified to come to the hospital that by the time we saw them it was too late," says Dr. Anca. "Often they died at home." No one knows how many women died from these back-alley abortions.

"Celibacy tax": A woman didn't have to be pregnant to come under scrutiny. In 1986 members of the Communist youth group were sent to quiz citizens about their sex lives. "How often do you have sexual intercourse?" the questionnaire read. "Why have you failed to conceive?" Women who did not have children, even if they could not, paid a "celibacy tax" of up to 10 percent of their monthly salaries.

The rebels who overthrew Ceausescu last month quickly rescinded the policy. "I would have killed Ceausescu for that law alone," says Maria Dulce from her bed at Bucharest's Municipal Hospital. The 29-year-old mother of two is recovering from a self-induced abortion. Here eyes are bruised with fatigue. She is among a half dozen women in the dingy hospital room. Dulce says she terminated her pregnancy because of the trauma associated with caring for her second child, an 18-month-old boy. "We had to buy milk on the black market," she says, "and we had to buy a heater just for the baby's room." She had to have an emergency hysterectomy only days before the uprising. "Now that it's possible for a woman to be a woman again I'm mutilated," Dulce says through tears. "And now there is a reason to have a child in this country."
- Karen Breslau, "Overplanned Parenthood: Ceausescu's cruel law", _Newsweek_,
Jan. 22, 1990, p. 35.

Update: I forwarded the link regarding this atrocious bill to my sister, who works in the Fairfax County, Virginia library system. She and about fifty other employees spent their afternoon clogging Cosgrove's voice & e-mail, and forwarding the link to their friends.

If you'd like to do a little voice mail & e-mail clogging, too -

Phone: (804)698-1078
Fax: (804)786-6310
Constituent Viewpoint: (800)-889-0229
Email: Del_Cosgrove@house.state.va.us

The sign on the toilet brush says it best: "Do not use for personal hygiene."

That admonition was the winner of an anti-lawsuit group's contest for the wackiest consumer warning label of the year.

The sponsor, Michigan Lawsuit Abuse Watch, says the goal is "to reveal how lawsuits, and concern about lawsuits, have created a need for common sense warnings on products."

The $500 first prize went to Ed Gyetvai, of Oldcastle, Ontario, who submitted the toilet-brush label. A $250 second prize went to Matt Johnson, of Naperville, Ill., for a label on a children's scooter that said, "This product moves when used."

A $100 third prize went to Ann Marie Taylor, of Camden, S.C., who submitted a warning from a digital thermometer that said, "Once used rectally, the thermometer should not be used orally."

"Warning labels are a sign of our lawsuit-plagued times," said group President Robert Dorigo Jones. "From the moment we raise our head in the morning off pillows that bear those famous Do Not Remove warnings, to when we drop back in bed at night, we are overwhelmed with warnings."

Saudi Arabia announced that it was increasing its aid to victims of the Asian tsunami disaster to 30 million dollars and would organize a telethon to raise more funds.

Given that the scale of the disaster and damage "has surpassed all expectations, royal orders have been issued to increase Saudi Arabia's aid to the victims from 10 million dollars to 30 million dollars," the official SPA news agency reported.

SPA reported earlier that King Fahd and Crown Prince Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz, whose oil-rich country initially pledged 10 million dollars in emergency funds for the victims, had ordered a telethon to be staged by state television on Thursday.

There are 8.8 million foreigners in Saudi Arabia, Labor Minister Dr. Ghazi al-Ghosaibi disclosed in May, a figure significantly higher than any that the government has previously reported. With an indigenous population of about 17 million, this means that there is almost one foreign resident for every two Saudi citizens.

The largest expatriate communities in Saudi Arabia include one million to 1.5 million people each from Bangladesh, India and Pakistan, and another 900,000 each from Egypt, Sudan and the Philippines. There are also 500,000 workers from Indonesia, and another 350,000 from Sri Lanka, the majority of whom are women.

Privatizers say the trust fund doesn't count because it's invested in U.S. government bonds, which are "meaningless i.o.u.'s."

People forget that Herbert Hoover expected private charities to deal with the effects of the Great Depression. As we know now, they couldn't do it, so the government had to take up the slack. I don't mind trying new ideas, but I really resent ignorant people suggesting we try old ideas that we already know failed. Supply-side tax cuts didn't work for Ronald Reagan and they are not working for George W. Bush. How many times must they be tried before these idiots learn they are a failure?