Copyright 2005 - Steal what you wantSat, May 11:07:47 3 GMTSat, May 11:07:47 3 GMTDaily Kos Daily Kos This is an XML content feed. It is intended to be viewed in a newsreader or syndicated to another site, subject to copyright and fair use.
Having gotten their butts kicked for 150 years in science and their clocks cleaned over the last 40 years in court, anti-science goons have reached deep into their black bag of tricks and pulled out a new gimmick called Academic Freedom Bills. By academic freedom, they mean a teacher is free to teach creationism (Or ostensibly anything else in any other subject), and the student is free to blow off mastering the curricula and answer any question or complete any homework assignment using whatever variant of right-wing anti-science nonsense they dream up. In some versions, that vacuous effort has to be awarded a good grade or positive review. The goal, of course, is teaching creationism:
Ed Brayton -- So why single out evolution ...? There is not one single theory in science, no matter how well supported or established, that doesn't have some people "raising questions" about it. Why not have teachers spend a day giving the Christian Science critique of the germ theory of disease?
You read stuff like the academic freedom post above and it might be easy to get discouraged, these antiscience clowns just never give up. Well neither do we! Just such a state bill quietly died last night, in large part due to the efforts of a small group of committed volunteers working together online called the Florida Citizens for Science:
Panda's Thumb -- Today is a wonderful day for Florida. The long battle to have new science standards and to teach evolution in our public schools is finally over. In the coming years young Floridians will learn science as they never have before.
Wired asks Why Can't Hollywood get science right? Good question and discussion, but at this point I'd be delirious with joy if our elected reps would try half as hard as Steven Spielberg.
Nanobacteria are a controversial topic; it's not clear they even exist! But if, like their larger namesake, they're real and can cause human disease, understanding and treating their effects could be as revolutionary to medical science as the Germ Theory of Disease.
OK, just for the record: Peak Oil isn't about oil "running out." It's about global demand outstripping production of cheap, accessible oil, and worsened as the world's handful of gigantic, producing reservoirs peak out, causing a sustained price squeeze. The concern some have is such a process could transform a once prosperous, oil consuming country into the national equivalent of a penniless, homeless petro-junkie standing on a street corner in the worst neighborhood imaginable jonesing for just one more oily draw from the pipeline, and willing to sell their mind, body, and soul to the most ruthless, evil bastards on the planet to get it. A problem this severe could only be solved by ... tax cuts benefitting billionaires!
Arrested in Pakistan in December 2001, Sami al-Haj spent nearly six-and-a-half years at Guantánamo without charge or trial. He had been on a more than a year-long hunger strike to protest his imprisonment. We hear al-Haj’s first public remarks from his hospital bed in Sudan ...
Al-Haj, who’s been on a hunger strike since January of 2007, was taken to a hospital immediately after landing in Khartoum. After a tearful reunion with his family, he spoke out against the treatment of prisoners at Guantánamo in an interview broadcast on Al Jazeera.
SAMI AL-HAJ: [translated] I’m very happy to be in Sudan, but I’m very sad because of the situation of our brothers who remain in Guantánamo. Conditions in Guantánamo are very, very bad, and they get worse by the day. Our human condition, our human dignity was violated, and the American administration went beyond all human values, all moral values, all religious values. In Guantánamo, you have animals that are called iguanas, rats that are treated with more humanity. But we have people from more than fifty countries that are completely deprived of all rights and privileges, and they will not give them the rights that they give to animals.
For more than seven years, I did not get a chance to be brought before a civil court. To defend their just case and to get the freedom that we’re deprived of, they ignored every kind of law, every kind of religion. But thank God. I was lucky, because God allowed that I be released. Although I’m happy, there is part of me that is not, because my brothers remain behind, and they are in the hands of people that claim to be champions of peace and protectors of rights and freedoms.
But the true just peace does not come through military force or threats to use smart or stupid bombs or to threaten with economic sanctions. Justice comes from lifting oppression and guaranteeing rights and freedoms and respecting the will of the people and not to interfere with a country’s internal politics.
This evening's Rescue Rangers are ybruti, PaintyKat, Got a Grip, YatPundit (doing a double),Patriot Daily, and joyful, with vcmvo2 as editor.
Tonight's diaries cover a variety of issues ranging from our history of struggle over labor, health-care, genocide and religion to recently under-reported stories about our government's management of the War on Terror. We rescue these diaries so that our community will have more time to enjoy, analyze, and discuss these topics. Remember that even if it is too late to recommend a diary, the diarist will appreciate your comments.
mole333 implores us to remember lessons learned at great cost and to support ways to spare others in grave danger in Yom HaShoah: Holocaust Remembrance Day. (Got a Grip)
Dismay and outrage are apparent as 8ackgr0und N015e reports on the 10,000 strong anti-Iraq war protest held yesterday by the ILWU. He goes on to further note that Al Jazeera covers US news better than Daily Kos?!!!! (vcmvo2)
Jeffersonian Democrat brings us news, both heartwarming and sad, of being provided with desperately needed healthcare in a foreign land that he's been denied in the U.S. in I Just Got Social Health Insurance! while PlaneCrazy gives us a personal example of how the sad state of our healthcare system can adversely affect even those who have great insurance in Prisoner of Employer Health Insurance. (Got a Grip)
Snapper asks which President, historically, redirected the government to address the needs of all citizens, instead of the wealthy few in The Party of Jackson, 1828-2008. (PaintyKat)
"To state the obvious, I thought it was wrong at the time. I thought phrases like ‘a few dead-enders,’ ‘last throes,’ all of those comments contributed over time to the frustration and sorrow of Americans because those statements and comments did not comport with the facts on the ground...and I think that history will judge me that I thought it was wrong and I knew what was right."
Asked if Bush bore responsibility for the placement of the "Mission Accomplished" banner posted above him at the speech, McCain took a big picture approach.
"Do I blame him for that specific banner? I have no knowledge of that. I can’t blame him for that. But I do, do say statements were made-’a few dead-enders,’ ‘last throes’...(that) were contradicted by the facts on the ground."
McCain has a penchant for rewriting history in such a way that he turns out to have been the hero of every story, though usually unrecognized as such "at the time". So what was McCain really saying in the spring of 2003 about "mission accomplished"?
NEIL CAVUTO (host): Senator -- after a conflict means after the conflict, and many argue the conflict isn't over.
McCAIN: Well, then why was there a banner that said mission accomplished on the aircraft carrier?
Look, the -- I have said a long time that reconstruction of Iraq would be a long, long, difficult process, but the conflict -- the major conflict is over, the regime change has been accomplished, and it's very appropriate. In two weeks, General Franks is going to come before the Senate Armed Services Committee, and we're going to have his overall assessment of the conflict. I think that's entirely appropriate because we'll be -- we'll be taking up the needs of the Defense Department and the men and women in the military on the Armed Services Committee.
But I'm looking for an overall review of the conflict, what we did right, what we did wrong, and what the needs are, including the issue of weapons of mass destruction. I remain confident that we will find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
"Now, I think it's entirely appropriate now that regime change has been orchestrated -- and though the danger is certainly not over, the mission is 'accomplished' -- it's appropriate to have a hearing."
So five years ago John McCain was endorsing propaganda about victory in Iraq that he now claims he knew to be false at the time.
Though when he was asked if he foresees a day when he would declare the mission in Iraq "accomplished," he said he would try to be more careful with his words.
"I would hate to use that kind of language, because I think it’s going to be one of these situations which is the classic counterinsurgency, that we’ve seen in conflicts around the world in the past, that there is slow, gradual progress and there is two steps forward and one step back," McCain said. "I don’t know if you could ever say quote ‘mission accomplished’ as much as you could say ‘Americans are out of harms way.’
The way to get American troops out of harm's way in Iraq is to withdraw them from Iraq, the one thing McCain insists he won't do. It looks to me as if McCain prefers to run for the presidency under this new banner:
