Environmentalists and officials in California and Washington blame the federal policy, which critics say violated the Endangered Species Act, was responsible for the deaths of 70,000 salmon, whose corpses lined the banks of the river. The Post said the plan was enacted "because of Cheney's intervention."
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Unlike other domestic animals, which were tamed by people, cats probably domesticated themselves, which could account for the haughty independence of their descendants. “The cats were adapting themselves to a new environment, so the push for domestication came from the cat side, not the human side,” Dr. Driscoll said.
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A spate of grisly attacks believed carried out by Sunni extremists killed dozens of Shiites around Baghdad over the past two days, just ahead of a planned huge march of devout Shiites through Sunni Arab heartlands to the remnants of a revered Shiite shrine.
A rush-hour bomb killed 25 people this morning in the largely Shiite neighborhood of Bayaa in southwest Baghdad, an Interior Ministry official said. Recently, the Mahdi Army, the militia loyal to the militant Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr, has escalated the violence against Sunnis in the area.
Ten people were killed in a bombing on Wednesday night in the mostly Shiite neighborhood of Kadhimiya in northwestern Baghdad.
And the police said they found up to 20 decapitated corpses — a hallmark of Sunni extremists — in an insurgent-dominated area south of the capital.
The attacks came ahead of the rally called by Mr. Sadr urging Shiites to march to Samarra to protest the recent bombing that destroyed twin golden minarets of the city’s Askariya shrine. The shrine’s dome was demolished in a bombing last year that unleashed a fury of sectarian killings and pushed the country toward civil war.
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Saturday evening I went into deep non-official cover (NOC) on a mission bearing VP designation Treated As: Top Secret/SCI. The last 20 hours have taken me into the deepest bowels of enemy territory where I have investigated the materials and methods used in their liberal jihad against our American way of security.
At 20:15 I rendezvoused beneath a highway--in a seedy Seattle neighborhood known for its radical liberal madrassas--with that Frenchman of the Freeways who goes by codename FreewayBlogger .
We then preceded into a cave-like room where he broadcast an hour of far-left extremist propaganda, flaunting the authorities, and spreading the terror of unchecked free expression. At 22:30 we retired to a radical safe-house where we spent most of the night ingesting meals ready to drink (MRD) while discussing the forthcoming day of training camp.
At 08:00 today, the freeway franco-freethinker began his insurgency training. The first lesson was on the art of salvaging the raw materials for these improvised expression devices (IEDs). An hour later he returned with a vehicle-load of cellulose-based substrate and other supplies:
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But if historian Peter Robinson is correct, the warriorization that Kaplan advocated and is being inculated into the uniformed ranks doesn't even work militarily. Rather than being too soft , we're futilely beating our hard heads against the realities of what we're facing. In the Spectator UK, Robinson, taking a leaf from the late Col. John Boyd, laments in an article called "The Way of the Warrior":In the decisive battle for hearts and minds, the moral image an army projects is as powerful as, if not more powerful than, the physical force it wields. From this perspective, a new report issued by the US Army mental health advisory team makes for gloomy reading. According to the BBC, the report, based on a survey of 1,700 American soldiers in Iraq, found that ‘less than half the troops in Iraq thought Iraqi civilians should be treated with dignity and respect. More than a third believed that torture was acceptable if it helped save the life of a fellow soldier or if it helped get information about the insurgents’. If this is true, the moral battle is close to being lost.
And the moral battle is being lost precisely because of the tribalization that's fluffing the military's tail feathers.
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Lucy, The Hippie, & I'm Damn Proud Of It
& Now For The Cuteness
The Son-in-Law With A Nice Lake Superior Smallmouth Bass
The Kid With A Nice Smallmouth
The humble potato puts on a dazzling display at 13,000 feet above sea level.
Along the frigid spine of the Andes, men and women in bare feet uproot tubers of multiple shapes and colors -- yellow, red, blue, purple, violet, pink with yellow spots, yellow with pink spots; round, oblong, twisted, hooked at the end like walking canes or spiraled like spinning tops.
Their names in Quechua, the ancient language of the Andes, evoke an intimate human connection: ''best black woman,'' ''best red woman,'' ''makes the daughter-in-law cry,'' ''like a deer's white tongue,'' ''red shadow'' and ''like an old bone,'' to name a few.
Respect for the many variations of potatoes is so profound among Aymara's 650 villagers that it was a natural place for the world's agronomists to produce seeds for a gene bank to preserve their diversity. The cold climate also protects against parasites that infest low-lying potato farms.
In their annual harvest this year, the villagers of Aymara gathered more than 2,000 types of potatoes from a 2 1/2-acre field. Scientists from the Lima-based International Potato Center were there to replenish their bank and provide more seeds to Andean communities.
The center was founded in 1971 as a nonprofit, internationally financed research institution to improve production of potatoes and other root crops in developing nations. It maintains the world's largest collection of tubers -- 4,500 types, including 3,000 from Peru. They are kept as tiny plants in test tubes or in cold chambers.
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An Army officer with a key role in the U.S. military hearings at Guantanamo Bay says they relied on vague and incomplete intelligence and were pressured to declare detainees ''enemy combatants,'' often without any specific evidence.
His affidavit, released Friday, is the first criticism by a member of the military panels that determine whether detainees will continue to be held.
Lt. Col. Stephen Abraham, a 26-year veteran of military intelligence who is an Army reserve officer and a California lawyer, said military prosecutors were provided with only ''generic'' material that didn't hold up to the most basic legal challenges.
Despite repeated requests, intelligence agencies arbitrarily refused to provide specific information that could have helped either side in the tribunals, according to Abraham, who said he served as a main liaison between the Combat Status Review Tribunals and those intelligence agencies.
''What were purported to be specific statements of fact lacked even the most fundamental earmarks of objectively credible evidence,'' Abraham said in the affidavit, filed in a Washington appeals court on behalf of a Kuwaiti detainee, Fawzi al-Odah, who is challenging his classification as an ''enemy combatant.''
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Researchers exploring the chromosomes of the modern chimpanzee have discovered an amazing tale in the DNA -- evidence of an ancient battle with a retrovirus against which early human beings and apes evolved different defenses.
That battle left chimps, gorillas and old world monkeys vulnerable to the virus 4 million years ago, but our human forebears evolved instead a natural antiviral protein that protected against it.
That evolutionary path, which gave us immunity to the ancient virus, nevertheless may have made human beings -- and not apes - vulnerable to the modern scourge of HIV.
Such are the startling conclusions of a study published in Friday's issue of the journal Science by researchers at the Fred Hutchison Cancer Research Center in Seattle.
"We did a really great job 4 million years ago, but now we have a major new retrovirus to deal with,'' said Shari Kaiser, a Fred Hutchison researcher and lead author of the report.
Her findings are the latest in the burgeoning new field of paleovirology, in which scientists have found etched into the genes of plants and animals something akin to a medical record that dates back millions of years.
"It is an absolutely fascinating story in evolutionary biology,'' said Dr. Warner Greene, director of the Gladstone Institute for Virology in San Francisco. Greene had seen a presentation of the study at an academic conference earlier this year.
The virus responsible for this ancient mayhem is long extinct, but Kaiser and her colleagues made their case by resurrecting a living version of it using the genetic instructions planted by the bug into the chimpanzee genome about 4 million years ago.
Retroviruses are a primitive microbes containing their own genetic information in a single strand of RNA -- a flimsier chain of molecules than DNA, but one that is able to transmit instructions on how to make proteins or copies of itself.
When a retrovirus infects a cell, it plants a copy of its genetic instructions directly into the genes of the cell it has invaded. These instructions, which are also converted into more stable DNA, can be passed down through generations if an egg cell, for example is infected. HIV is a retrovirus. So was this ancient bug, Pan troglodyte endogenous retrovirus, which scientists call PtERV, or PERV for short.
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According to congressional sources and mental healthcare professionals knowledgeable about the secret program who spoke with Salon, two CIA-employed psychologists, James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, were at the center of the program, which likely violated the Geneva Conventions on the treatment of prisoners. The two are currently under investigation: Salon has learned that Daniel Dell’Orto, the principal deputy general counsel at the Department of Defense, sent a “document preservation” order on May 15 to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and other top Pentagon officials forbidding the destruction of any document mentioning Mitchell and Jessen or their psychological consulting firm, Mitchell, Jessen and Associates, based in Spokane, Wash. Dell’Orto’s order was in response to a May 1 request from Sen. Carl Levin, the Democratic chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, who is investigating the abuse of prisoners in U.S. custody.
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O’Hanlon offered a slightly different take on how a HDS should be formed when attempting to pre-empt further ethnic conflict looming on the horizon by actively partaking in what O’Hanlon called "soft partition." This process would consist of U.S.-sponsored ethnic segregation via relocation within a period of 12–18 months. O’Hanlon admits bloodshed would continue and resistance would be substantial. However, with support of local leaders violence might diminish and hard partitioning could be avoided. Much of the justification for this plan is based on observations that violence between and within Iraqi communities based on ethnicity and sectarian divisions is already widespread, and this could easily spiral into full-fledged ethnic cleansing. Yet, one crucial criticism of this approach rang clear: No U.S.-led mass relocation of peoples has ever taken place without great costs and suffering by those being relocated.
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Last year US-occupied Iraq was ranked fourth in the Failed States Index produced by America's Foreign Policy magazine and the Fund for Peace. Now, in the 2007 Failed States Index released on Monday, Iraq has emerged as the world's second most unstable country, behind Sudan, giving the lie to the Bush administration's oft-repeated assertion that conditions in Iraq are improving.
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The Minnesota Health Department suppressed research about additional deadly cancers among Iron Range miners for a year, even though a top government scientist warned that the findings raised significant new health issues.
The department discovered in March 2006 that a rare, asbestos-related cancer had stricken 35 more miners than the 17 previously known. All of the miners have died. The state didn't release the new information until March of this year, a decision that some health experts are now criticizing.
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The dead bees under Dennis VanEngelsdorp's microscope were like none he had ever seen before.
He had expected to see mites or amoebas, perennial pests of bees. Instead, he found internal organs swollen with debris and strangely blackened. The bees' intestinal tracts were scarred, and their rectums were abnormally full of what appeared to be partly digested pollen. Dark marks on the sting glands were telltale signs of infection.
"The more you looked, the more you found," said VanEngelsdorp, acting apiarist for the state of Pennsylvania. "Each thing was a surprise."
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Three more people have died after a drag-racing car went out of control and careened into a crowd of spectators, raising the death toll to seven, state officials said Sunday.
The crash occurred Saturday night during an "exhibition burnout" - when a driver spins his tires to make them heat up and smoke - at the Cars for Kids charity event in Selmer, located about 80 miles east of Memphis.
....
Witness Garett Moore said he was about to walk across the highway, thinking the show was over, when he saw the dragster racing toward him. He was about 15 feet from the wreck but was uninjured.
"It ain't really safe to do anything with drag cars on a city street," Moore said.
Selmer Police Chief Neal Burks said "bodies were flying into the air when it happened."
"I saw body parts flying everywhere," said witness Sean Hood.About all I can say about this is Doh!
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The Justice Department is scrambling to find willing replacements for nearly two dozen temporary U.S. attorneys, whose time in office is now limited under a law signed last week by President Bush.
The developments add to growing personnel problems at the Justice Department in the wake of last year's firings of a number of U.S. attorneys, which led to a political confrontation with Congress, lowered morale and contributed to an exodus of officials from the upper ranks of the department.
A quarter of all federal prosecutors are now on the job on an interim or acting basis -- reflecting a vacancy rate that is much higher than normal, according to department statistics. Five senior Justice Department officials have also resigned since March, including one who announced his departure Friday.
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Thus, although he seriously believes that his extremely conservative legal opinions are in the best interests of African-Americans, and yearns to be respected by them, he is arguably one of the most viscerally despised people in black America. It is incontestable that he has benefited from affirmative action at critical moments in his life, yet he denounces the policy and has persuaded himself that it played little part in his success. He berates disadvantaged people who view themselves as victims of racism and preaches an austere individualism, yet harbors self-pitying feelings of resentment and anger at his own experiences of racism. His ardent defense of states’ rights would have required him to uphold Virginia’s anti-miscegenation law, not to mention segregated education, yet he lives with a white wife in Virginia. He is said to dislike light-skinned blacks, yet he is the legal guardian of a biracial child, the son of one of his numerous poor relatives. He frequently preaches the virtues of honesty and truthfulness, yet there is now little doubt that he lied repeatedly during his confirmation hearings — not only about his pornophilia and bawdy humor but, more important, about his legal views and familiarity with cases like Roe v. Wade.
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The Army general who investigated the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal has said he was forced into retirement by civilian Pentagon officials because he had been “overzealous.”
In an interview with The New Yorker, his first since retiring in January, Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba said that former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and other senior civilian and military officials had treated him brusquely after the investigation into the formerly American-run prison outside Baghdad was completed in 2004. He also said that in early 2006 he was ordered, without explanation, to retire within a year.
“They always shoot the messenger,” General Taguba said. “To be accused of being overzealous and disloyal — that cuts deep into me. I was ostracized for doing what I was asked to do.”
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A senior Justice Department official who helped carry out the dismissals of federal prosecutors said Friday he is resigning. Mike Elston, chief of staff to Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty, is the fifth Justice official to leave after being linked to the dismissals of the prosecutors.
Elston was accused of threatening at least four of the eight fired U.S. attorneys to keep quiet about their ousters. In a statement Friday, the Justice Department said Elston was leaving voluntarily to take a job with an unnamed Washington-area law firm.
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A 50-ton bowhead whale caught off the Alaskan coast last month had a weapon fragment embedded in its neck that showed it survived a similar hunt — more than a century ago.
Embedded deep under its blubber was a 3 1/2 -inch arrow-shaped projectile that has given researchers insight into the whale's age, estimated at 115 to 130 years old.
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Many will recall that on July 8, 1947, witnesses claimed that an unidentified object with five aliens aboard crashed onto a sheep and cattle ranch just outside Roswell , New Mexico . This is a well-known incident that many say has long been covered up by the U.S. Air Force and the federal government.
However, what you may NOT know that in the month of March 1948, exactly nine months after that historic day, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, Condoleezza Rice, Alberto Gonzalez, Ann Coulter and Dan Quayle were all born.
See what happens when aliens breed with sheep? This piece of information may clear up a lot of things.
Farm boys wild to couple
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It is an impressive show of public service when twelve prominent and distinguished current and former law professors of well-respected schools are able to amass their collective wisdom in the course of only several days to provide their legal expertise to the Court on behalf of a criminal defendant.
The Court trusts that this is a reflection of these eminent academics' willingness in the future to step to the plate and provide like assistance in cases involving any of the numerous litigants, both in this Court and throughout the courts of our nation, who lack the financial means to fully and properly articulate the merits of their legal positions even in instances where failure to do so could result in monetary penalties, incarceration, or worse. The Court will certainly not hesitate to call for such assistance from these luminaries, as necessary in the interests of justice and equity, whenever similar questions arise in the cases that come before it.
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I think my favorite issue here is Paul's 1993 newsletter advising ''Frightened Americans'' on how to get their money out of the country. He advised that Peruvian citizenship could be purchased for a mere 25 grand. That we should all become Peruvians is one of the more innovative suggestions of this festive campaign season. But what will the Peruvians think of it?
As a libertarian leftist, I understand viscerally the charm of Paul's message. Who wouldn't be charmed? He's anti-war, anti-torture, anti-drug war, and anti-corporation -- a real progressive dream date. Until you reflect on the fact that he's also anti-choice, anti-gay, anti-environment, anti-sane immigration policy, and apparently, anti-separation of church and state as well:....
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A frog with fluorescent purple markings and 12 kinds of dung beetles were among two dozen new species discovered in the remote plateaus of eastern Suriname, scientists said Monday.
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* A 1992 screed on African-American"racial terrorism" in Los Angeles, in which Paul insists that "our country is being destroyed by a group of actual and potential terrorists -- and they can be identified by the color of their skin."
* Another 1992 article, this one asserting that "complex embezzling" is "100% white and Asian;" and noting that young black male muggers are "unbelievably fleet-footed."
* A Houston Chronicle citation from 1996, in which he asserts that Barbara Jordan was a "fraud." Paul wrote: "Everything from her imitation British accent, to her supposed expertise in law, to her distinguished career in public service, is made up. If there were ever a modern case of the empress without clothes, this is it. She is the archetypical half-educated victimologist, yet her race and sex protect her from criticism."
Later, also from the Orange Devil:Founded in 1985, the eight-page newsletter featured Paul's extreme libertarian perspective on a number of different issues, notably crackpot theories about the Federal Reserve and the money system and a tireless advocacy of a return to the gold standard—a longtime Ron Paul hobby horse.
If you're more of a dead-tree fan, you can find Paul's thoughts on foreign policy reprinted in the January 2007 issue of the National Times, a white supremacist newspaper that apparently gets distributed through the time-honored neo-Nazi method of throwing the thing onto unsuspecting people's porches in the middle of the night and scurrying away.
For a real look inside the tiny, demented mind of the neo-Nazi, though, we need to go to Stormfront. Stormfront is the oldest and largest white supremacist site on the World Wide Web; its discussion boards provide an unequaled opportunity for eavesdropping on the thoughts and plans of the racist underground in America and around the world. And you don't have to visit for very long before one thing jumps out at you: they positively adore Ron Paul.
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It didn't take Reece long to combine his love of work with flying. "It would takes us three weeks to set up the cables," he said. "With a helicopter I could do it in half a day."
The brothers bought a Bell helicopter and Reece used the GI Bill to put himself through aviation school.
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The nation's largest combat veterans group urged the military Friday to exercise "a little common sense" and call off its investigation of an Iraq war veteran who wore a uniform during antiwar protests.
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