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Front Page News
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This is a true story, but I'm changing the names to protect the innocent. A co-worker, whom I'll call "Mark," has been on assignment recently about 10 or 11 time zones away. Back home, his co-worker "John" sent him an email about a meeting that transpired in Mark's absence. Here's what John meant to...
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Yesterday, President Bush delivered a speech in Israel in which he called "appeasers" anyone who advocates talks with Iran. He even drew an explicit parallel to 1930's-era Nazi appeasers : "Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will...
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The Republican Party seems to be ensnared in a slow-motion downward spiral of late. Party unity on Capitol Hill has all but evaporated, the rank and file are disassociating themselves from the White House like rats from a sinking ship, and the prospects of an anti-GOP electoral slaughter in November...
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The sham "trials" of detainees at Guantanamo have always been legally and Constitutionally invalid, but they were continuing anyway. Now, the process of these show trials has met some blowback from within the Pentagon (in contrast to civilian trials, all of the defense attorneys, prosecutors, and judges...
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The numbers speak for themselves : Eighty-two percent of Americans now say the country's seriously off on the wrong track, up 10 points in the last year to a point from its record high in polls since 1973. And 31 percent approve of Bush's job performance overall, while 66 percent disapprove. The reasons...
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" Cabin Fever ", this week's episode of "Lost," brought us a little closer to the rescue of the Oceanic Six, reinforced the suggestion that Claire is dead, painted a picture of John Locke as some sort of Dalai Lama over the island, and revealed that the island is capable of being moved from one location...
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In August 2002, John Yoo wrote an infamous memo on behalf of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel which attempted to justify the use of torture by the CIA. The memo has since been released ( PDF here ), widely circulated, and then disavowed by the Bush White House. Another memo accompanied...
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The pending House appropriations bill that would provide "emergency" funding for the continued occupation of Iraq is certain to draw a veto from the White House (and how much longer is this five-year-old occupation going to be falsely labeled an "emergency" so it can be funded off the books, outside...
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Lawrence F. Kaplan, one of the premier neocon cheerleaders for the invasion of Iraq, has had a change of heart. He no longer considers himself a neocon, and he has had some very unflattering things to say about the Iraq invasion (which he and William Kristol pimped in a 2003 book), the handling of its...
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From a new memoir by Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, former commander of US forces in Iraq : Hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars were unnecessarily spent, and worse yet, too many of our most precious military resource, our American soldiers, were unnecessarily wounded, maimed, and killed as a result....
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Because of the resurgence of nuclear power, uranium mining claims in the western US have skyrocketed from 2,000 in 2001 to over 43,000 last year. Those claims are now encroaching on the Grand Canyon and other western monuments: On public lands within five miles of Grand Canyon National Park, there are...
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Following a speech in Missouri yesterday, President Bush engaged in an exceedingly rare question-and-answer session with employees of the company where he was speaking. Among other topics, he repeated his threadbare spin of ethanol as a viable fuel source : "As you know, I'm a ethanol person," he said,...
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As I do every week, I watch "Lost" online a day or two after it airs on TV. In the meantime, I deliberately avoid reading any reviews or commentary online about that episode. Before writing this post, I've maintained that practice, so I still haven't seen what anyone else has to say about this week's...
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The 1958 Frank Capra educational film The Unchained Goddess contains a specific and prophetic warning about excess carbon dioxide emissions from industry and transportation, and their potential to trigger catastrophic global warming: Even now, Man may be unwittingly changing the world's climate through...
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As I mentioned recently , the Northshore Brasserie is one of two authentic French restaurants in Knoxville. Tonight, I joined four friends for another evening of exquisitely prepared classic French dishes. Just like the last time the five of us dined there together, the food, the wine, the atmosphere,...
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Here's my first poll: Share this post: Email | del.icio.us | Digg | Reddit...
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I'm not one to automatically trust the word of any OPEC minister, but this quote from Chakib Khelil, Algeria's energy minister, bears some consideration : Opec's president on Monday warned oil prices could hit $200 a barrel and there would be little the cartel could do to help. [...] Mr Khelil blamed...
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R. Neal has this week's edition of the quasi-weekly TennViews blog roundup. See what Tennessee progressives have been posting about here . Share this post: Email | del.icio.us | Digg | Reddit...
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If the title of this week's "Lost" episode (" The Shape Of Things To Come ") is to be taken literally, we're in for a mighty exciting ride in future episodes. This episode was tight, the narrative was fast-paced and controlled, and the story jumped forward in several different respects. The episode blew...
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John McCain's "Pander To Anyone I Can Think Of" tour has made a particularly shameless stop in New Orleans. In the still-devastated Lower Ninth Ward, the poorest and most heavily damaged area of the city, McCain had the gall to say this : "Never again will a disaster of this nature be handled in the...
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By a lopsided vote of 349-62, the House of Representatives voted today to impose a moratorium on seven regulations promulgated by the Bush White House which would have eliminated $13 billion in Medicaid funding for health care for the poor. Every House Democrat and two-thirds of House Republicans voted...
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In a comment here , the inimitable Betty Bean said: Is it too late to draft Gore? My sentiments exactly. Share this post: Email | del.icio.us | Digg | Reddit...
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The rapidly shriveling newspaper industry has seen many papers adopt a smaller size to save costs. One Maryville paper has decided to spin the decay of their business model a bit more creatively : Instead of shrinking staff, the Maryville Daily Times is shrinking the physical size of the newspaper, scaling...
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Here it is, the birthday present I really, really want (even though my birthday is nearly five months away): When we first saw the [Nikon] D3 before it was officially launched I'll admit there were some raised eyebrows, and the first question was 'is this a replacement for the D2Hs, the D2X, both or...
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Today is my first blogiversary. Yay! Now, who brought the cake? Share this post: Email | del.icio.us | Digg | Reddit...
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I spent most of the day at the 2008 Rossini Festival in downtown Knoxville. It was a blast, and I'm exhausted. Just like last year , rain threatened this year's street party. Unlike last year, the rain stopped right before the street festival started. Although I haven't seen an official head count, I...
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From Cathy , on her husband Doug (seen in comments here ): Doug would pass a drug screen. Crazy doesn't show up in body fluids. (He may be drug-free, but I'm reasonably sure Doug never sleeps.) Share this post: Email | del.icio.us | Digg | Reddit...
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Pope Benedict gave an address in Washington today in which he derided our country's founding principle of separation between church and state. Our nation's firewall between clerical and legal authority really seemed to bother him. Arguing for an even more aggressive intrusion of religious dogma into...
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The FBI has always had the ability to obtain evidence through subpoenas issued by judges. In a case tangentially related to the 2005 London bombings, an FBI agent lawfully obtained a subpoena for the seizure of certain records from a suspect at North Carolina State University (who was later exonerated)....
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Number of Google News hits on Obama's "bitter" remark: 2006 Number of Google Blog Search hits on the same remarks: 3757 Number of Google News hits on Rep. Geoff Davis (R-Kentucky) calling Obama " boy ": 64 Number of Google Blog Search hits on the same remarks: 112 "Liberal" media? Draw your own conclusions....
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According to this KNS story , 407,000 households in Tennessee were enrolled in the federal food stamps program in March. The Census Bureau estimates that there are 2.4 million occupied households in Tennessee; that means 17 percent of households in this state are on food stamps. The federal food stamp...
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The quote of the day comes from today's NYT editorial : We believe that the fight against Al Qaeda is the central battle for this generation, but Mr. Bush’s claim that Iraq is the main front is wrong. That is Afghanistan, and the United States is in real danger of losing because Mr. Bush’s failed adventure...
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This week's "Freezing in April" edition of the TennViews blog roundup is here . Go see what Tennessee progressives are talking about. Share this post: Email | del.icio.us | Digg | Reddit...
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Barack Obama said this yesterday : "In a lot of these communities in big industrial states like Ohio and Pennsylvania, people have been beaten down so long. ... The jobs have been gone now for 25 years, and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration and the Bush administration,...
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I'm feeling lazy this rainy Friday evening, so here are some excerpts from recent posts by the fine people inhabiting my blogroll. Juan Cole sums up the current state of the nation: Now Bush has now turned over the decision-making about the course of the Iraq War to Gen. David Petraeus . So Congress...
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When China was awarded the 2008 Olympics seven years ago, the executive director of the International Olympic Committee made the announcement with breathtaking naiveté : Beijing was the front-runner throughout the race, even with criticism about its human rights record. IOC members clearly believed the...
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General David Petraeus gave one of his patented dog-and-pony shows before the Senate Armed Services Committee today, in which he suggested that the administration's failed strategy in Iraq should be given even more time to continue failing : Telling Congress that progress in Iraq was “fragile and reversible,”...
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President Bush signed the Colombia Free Trade Agreement yesterday and sent it to Congress for consideration, over the objections of practically anyone with a conscience : President Bush’s decision to send the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement (FTA) to Congress over the strong objections of the leadership...
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We've ignored the climate change problem for too long, and it may already be too late to do anything about it. The international targets for atmospheric carbon dioxide are currently pegged at 550 parts per million. According to James Hansen, that level is nowhere near low enough; he is asserting that...
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Last night, I joined four friends for dinner at the Northshore Brasserie for a birthday celebration. The verdict: wow. The Northshore Brasserie is one of two authentic French restaurants in Knoxville (I'm not including The Orangery in that list, since it is neither strictly French nor particularly authentic)....
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Last night, I attended a dinner sponsored by the UT School of Journalism and Electronic Media, as part of this week's conference on Web journalism . I felt honored to be invited (since I'm not a journalist); I attended with some friends , and I also had a chance to meet several people whose work I've...
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Two stories came out today on the deepening problem of unwarranted and unconstrained domestic surveillance in the ongoing War On Your Liberty; each of the two stories contains assurances by government officials that don't even pass the snicker test. The first story takes place at the state level, where...
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A new survey has concluded that 59 percent of US doctors support a national, single-payer health insurance plan, while only 32 percent of doctors oppose the idea. That's a huge shift from the last survey, done just six years ago, which found 49 percent in favor and 40 percent opposed. The reasons are...
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A couple of physicists in Italy have developed an explanation for poltergeist activity, which suspiciously always seems to happen around children; it has to do with quantum mechanics and the chemical changes that occur in the brain around the time of puberty : Brovetto and Maxia hypothesise that the...
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After a brief but well-deserved break, R. Neal has this week's roundup of Tennessee liberal bloggers. See what everyone is typing about here . Share this post: Email | del.icio.us | Digg | Reddit...
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Two stories from yesterday illustrate the Bush administration's use of foot-dragging as a tactical maneuver in their war against the proper role of government. First, the EPA is refusing to comply in a timely manner with a Supreme Court decision from nearly a year ago which ordered the EPA to begin regulating...
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Three very cool stories caught my eye today. 1) Researchers have managed to decipher and play back a recording made nearly two decades before Edison's phonograph. The phonautogram was made in France in 1860 and represents the earliest known recording of any sound. Although the recording (and others like...
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Of all the humanitarian aid organizations in the world, Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières) stands head and shoulders above the rest. They go where the Red Cross and others dare not. In the face of murderous assaults on aid workers, in which three of their own staff members were killed,...
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The Wilkins Ice Shelf is a region of ice in Antarctica roughly the size of Connecticut, and it is collapsing much faster than scientists had predicted. In 1993, the British Antarctic Survey issued a forecast that the shelf would collapse within 30 years; based on the latest observations however, it may...
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As a consequence of this debacle in our local government, Knox County Commissioners are under a court order not to violate the Sunshine Law again, under penalty of fines and possibly even jail time. Given the events of the last year and a half in this county, one would think they'd have sense enough...
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