#2
Joe, Apophys asteroid is what... a mile and half?
It can sure make a nice good firecracker, but moon 'sploding? Does not compute. If it were to hit earth, no big in grand scheme of things, just likely ELE, with some survivors, possibly even enough humans to restart. You would need a nice deep cave on the opposite side of impact, with a food supply for about 30 years, or means to generate electricity so you can grow things. The trick is to know what is the opposite side of impact and that your cave is not prone to cave-ins.
#11
I still blame Farve Once again its FAVRE. While I have a lot of doubts about the totality of man made climate change I also think it is a goood idea to change over our power system to one that is lees poluting. But even a "green" power system will effect the environment.
#12
Global WarmingGlobal Cooling Global Climate Change is at best hubris and at worst a scam that would make Bernie Madoff's ponzi scheme look like a bodega heist. George Carlin was right.
#14
Anthropogenic Global warming DOES NOT EXIST until someoen can actually PROVE it.
Its a supposition, and a bad one at that - its coutner to the data.
All AGW is, is a figment of an incomplete climate model. Its no mroe valid a predictor of world climate than World Of Warcraft is a predictor of world economies.
Until you cna post a full set of CONCLUSIVE, clean and unrefuted data and a theory that *proves* AGW, then you're simply WRONG.
The "green" martians will never try to prove it. This unproven, "global warming" is agenda driven. The agenda is to knock down the industrialized nations to the level of non-industrialized. Egalitarianism run amok. But, its OK for people like Al Gore to get rich along the way.
As long as it is agenda driven, the environmental scientists will never try to prove it. For example, now some of the scientists are stating that global cooling is caused by global warming.
Clashes broke out in South Korea when security guards tried to break up a protest by opposition MPs that has paralysed the country's parliament for weeks.
Several people were injured in the scuffle that broke out on Saturday when about 200 guards began forcibly removing MPs holding a sit-in in the parliament building. Television footage showed security guards grabbing some of the MPs by the arms and legs, while others linked arms and chanted slogans in protest.
"I've never seen anything like this, even during the (late president Park Chung-hee's) Yushin dictatorship," said Chung Sei-kyun, leader of the main opposition Democratic Party, who led the protest.
Authorities at the National Assembly had earlier asked the party to end its sit-in and remove banners from the building's walls. Scores of Democratic MPs had occupied parliament since mid-December to prevent the ruling Grand National Party (GNP) pushing through a free trade pact with the United States and other controversial bills.
Clashes involving sledgehammers and fire extinguishers broke out on December 18 after the GNP insisted the free trade pact, signed by Seoul and Washington last year but awaiting ratification by both legislatures, be approved quickly. The opposition, which has 83 seats in the 299-member parliament compared with the GNP's 172, says South Korea should not ratify it until the US Congress also moves to do so.
The ruling party sees the pact as necessary to stimulate the slowing economy and argues that approval by Seoul will encourage the US Congress to move faster. But there is strong opposition to the pact including among farmers and other workers who fear it will hit jobs.
Also controversial is a bill to allow large businesses and newspapers to acquire controlling stakes in local broadcasters, which critics would strengthen the right's control on news media. The rival parties are also wrangling over tax cuts for the wealthy, easing regulations on industrial conglomerates' ownership of banks and privatising the state-run Korea Development Bank.
#1
How come the Koreans are still using MPs when the rest of the world has moved on to MP3s? South Korea is supposed to be quite connected Internet-wise.
The "Clashes involving sledgehammers and fire extinguishers" shows a nice sense of style, although the article is unclear if this is combined-arms (infantry & artillery, so to speak) or sledgehammers vs fire extinguishers.
Officials today said the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has revoked Gov. Rod Blagojevich's access to classified federal security information.
Blagojevich spokesman Lucio Guerrero tonight called the move "pretty standard procedure." He says there are still a number of other state officials with access.
Also today, Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan said he is calling lawmakers back to Springfield next week for a possible vote on impeaching Blagojevich.
About the security access, Illinois Emergency Management Agency spokeswoman Patti Thompson said that the head of the Illinois State Police and Illinois Emergency Management Agency have access to federal security intelligence and could relay it to the governor. Homeland Security spokeswoman Amy Kudwa confirmed the revocation. But she declined to comment further.
Blagojevich was arrested Dec. 9 on corruption charges that included allegations he sought to sell the U.S. Senate seat vacated by President-elect Barack Obama. The governor denies any wrongdoing.
A House special investigative committee weighing whether to recommend impeachment is scheduled to continue its hearing Tuesday, a day after U.S. Atty. Patrick Fitzgerald is to ask a judge whether the panel can hear some of the covert recordings made of Blagojevich.
Today, Madigan issued a letter telling all lawmakers to be back at the Statehouse in Springfield Wednesday. The letter says the House may be called to vote on the panel's report next week. Madigan told his House colleagues they may need to be in session every day through Jan. 13.
The governor named former state Atty. Gen. Roland Burris to the seat this week, adding fuel to critics' calls to impeach him as soon as possible. Burris' appointment is expected to be challenged by U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who does not want anyone appointment by the embattled governor to take a seat in the U.S. Senate.
Also Friday, the House panel considering impeachment will invite Burris to testify, said a spokesman for Speaker Michael Madigan. It's unclear, however, when that would take place. Rep. Jim Durkin (R-Western Springs), the minority spokesman on the impeachment panel, said his staff reached out to Burris aides to ask for him to appear before the committee to explain how his appointment came about.
Durkin said part of the impeachment panel's case deals with federal allegations that the governor sought to auction the U.S. Senate seat that Blagojevich has now given to Burris. "It's extremely important that Mr. Burris appear before our committee and explain to us the nature or the circumstances on which this appointment happened," Durkin said. "He needs to tell the people of the state under oath--and I hope this is the situation--that he had clean hands in this appointment," Durkin said. "He owes us and he owes the people of the state some assurance."
Posted by: Fred ||
01/03/2009 00:00 ||
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#2
Oh, I'm beginning to get the picture now...... he can't be the Blgonator because his access to DHS classified material and information has been suspended? I guess he'll just have to call Sandy Berger for all that urgent, Illinois need-to-know stuff.
#5
A classified security clearance with his ties to Rezko and Auchi? I just read Malkin's blog on Cubans and Hezbollah crossing the Mexican border, when border issues have largely been ignored since the election. We truly have a Department of Homeland Insecurity.
Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter is expected to name Denver public schools superintendent Michael Bennet to fill a Senate vacancy created by the promotion of Sen. Ken Salazar to Interior secretary in the Obama administration, sources said Friday.
One source close to the governor, who is in a position to know and another source in the Democratic Party, said that Bennet is Ritter's choice. Both spoke on condition of anonymity.
Bennet had been mentioned as a possible choice for Obama's education secretary, but Obama chose 44-year-old Arne Duncan, chief executive officer of Chicago public schools for that Cabinet post.
Bennet was considered a dark horse candidate for the Senate spot because of his lack of legislative experience.
The decision was seen as a difficult one for Ritter, a first-term governor, because Democrats want someone who can raise enough money to keep Salazar's seat, which comes up for election in 2010. Salazar had raised more than $2 million for re-election.
Other potential successors mentioned earlier included Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper, who won favor by hosting a successful Democratic National Convention this year, and Salazar's brother, U.S. Rep. John Salazar.
U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette said last month that she'd gotten several calls encouraging her to seek an appointment. Another candidate is Democratic Rep. Ed Perlmutter, who took a traditionally Republican seat in suburban Denver in 2006.
Ritter had been known for appointing committees to study difficult issues before taking action.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/03/2009 00:00 ||
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Seat-warmer for Hickenlooper. Lets Hickenlooper serve out his term.
#2
There weren't any GOOD candidates. Denver has tasted the kool-aid and found it desirable. Let them live with the results. Glad I didn't move back up there when I retired.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
01/03/2009 17:04 Comments ||
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This was an absolute scandal at the time. Rolando Cruz was a knucklehead and a gangbanger, playing a game to try and snatch the reward money, but he didn't deserve to be railroaded to death row. Several cops lied repeatedly on the witness stand. The DuPage County states attorney, later the Illinois Attorney General, Jim Ryan, won elections when thumping Cruz was good and lost a bid for governor when the scandal broke. People quit their jobs over this. And several people ended up indicted by a special prosecutor for malfeasance, though the DuPage jury that heard the trial wouldn't convict, as noted below.
A wrongly-convicted man sat on death row for 11 years. Men who lied to multiple courts walked free. A man who confessed to the killing is only now going to be tried for it. And the Nicarico family has had a knife thrust in their guts every day these last 25 years.
Burris wanted Cruz dead -- nothing personal, of course, it was just politics -- because as a black Democrat he couldn't afford to look 'soft on crime' to the white suburbanites and downstaters in his run for governor.
Bastid.
Former Illinois attorney general Roland Burris, embattled Gov. Rod Blagojevich's pick to replace Barack Obama in the Senate, is no stranger to controversy.
Public fury over the governor's alleged misconduct has masked the once lively debate over Burris' decision to continue to prosecute, despite the objections of one of his top prosecutors, the wrong man for a high-profile murder case.
While state attorney general in 1992, Burris aggressively sought the death penalty for Rolando Cruz, who twice was convicted of raping and murdering a 10-year-old girl in the Chicago suburb of Naperville. The crime took place in 1983.
But by 1992, another man had confessed to the crime, and Burris' own deputy attorney general was pleading with Burris to drop the case, then on appeal before the Illinois Supreme Court.
Burris refused. He was running for governor. "Anybody who understood this case wouldn't have voted for Burris," Rob Warden, executive director of the Center on Wrongful Convictions, told ProPublica. Indeed, Burris lost that race, and two other attempts to become governor. Burris' role in the Cruz case was "indefensible and in defiance of common sense and common decency," Warden said. "There was obvious evidence that [Cruz] was innocent."
Deputy attorney general Mary Brigid Kenney agreed and eventually resigned rather than continue to prosecute Cruz. Once Burris assigned Kenney to the case in 1991, she became convinced that Cruz was innocent, a victim of what she believed was prosecutorial misconduct. She sent Burris a memo reporting that the jury convicted Cruz without knowing that Brian Dugan, a repeat sex offender and murderer, had confessed to the crime. Burris never met with Kenney to discuss a new trial for Cruz, Kenney told ProPublica. "This is something the attorney general should have been concerned about," Kenney, now an assistant public guardian in Cook County, said in an interview. "I knew the prosecutor's job was not merely to secure conviction but to ensure justice was done."
Kenney was not alone in her beliefs. Prior to Cruz's 1985 trial, the lead detective in the case resigned in protest over prosecutors' handling of the case, according to news reports at the time.
And rather than argue Burris' case before the state supreme court, Kenney also stepped down. "What I took away was that [Burris] wasn't going to do anything to seem soft on crime," Kenney said. "He didn't have the guts."
In her resignation letter, Kenney claimed Burris had "seen fit to ignore the evidence in this case."
"I cannot sit idly by as this office continues to pursue the unjust prosecution of Rolando Cruz," she wrote. "I realized that I was being asked to help execute an innocent man."
Burris' response at the time: "It is not for me to place my judgment over a jury, regardless of what I think." (We have also left a message for Burris at his office and will post an update if we hear back.)
Burris is exactly wrong: the job of a prosecutor and attorney general is to ensure justice is done. He could and should have said, "this man is innocent, and this is how I know he's innocent", to the public. And he might have won the day by doing what was right instead of what was politically expedient.
State prosecutors carried on with the prosecution, even after DNA evidence in 1995 excluded Cruz as the victim's rapist and linked somebody else, sex offender Brian Dugan, to the crime.
Eventually, prosecutors' case hit a wall. The Illinois Supreme Court reversed Cruz's conviction and granted him a third trial. (The court declared that the trial judge in the case had improperly excluded Dugan's confession and thus compromised Cruz's defense.) In the new trial, Cruz was acquitted. The judge in that case concluded, "I'd hope and pray the person or persons -- whoever is culpable -- is brought to justice."
In late 1995, Cruz finally walked free after serving 11 years on death row for a crime he did not commit.
A grand jury later indicted four sheriff's deputies and three former county prosecutors for their roles in the Cruz case. They were eventually acquitted. Burris was never accused of any wrongdoing or misconduct. Dugan is scheduled to stand trial for the crime next year, 26 years after it was committed.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/03/2009 00:00 ||
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#1
Drudge has story up that the Demo's might physically block Burris from the floor.
Heh. Um.... Barb, can we has Popcorn Southern Style pls?
#3
How would you like to drive over a bridge designed by an engineer who was easily spirited through a school with no exams that separate people into "Groups of Winners and Losers"?
How about you empower educators to put a little foot to ass and possibly even make the kids do things they might not want to.
I went to a little country high school that didn't even have air conditioning in the late 80's. They had no money or resources to speak of, not even a football team, but I believe I got a fine education that served me well in life and college. It's not always going to boil down to money. Kids and teachers also have to give a rat's ass.
#4
"I would have picked Noam Chomsky for state, Naomi Klein for defense, Bernardine Dohrn for Attorney General, Bill Fletcher for commerce, James Thindwa for labor, Barbara Ransby for human services, Paul Krugman for treasury, and Amy Goodman for press secretary. So what do I know?"
Evidently, not nearly as much as you think do, Bill.
#5
After looking at that motley collection of washed up ideologues and people whose only qualification is that they are consistently collectivist and consistently WRONG, I guess he believes in steering straight for the cliff with the accelerator on the floor; he would have made a wonderful lemming.
Considering most of the other idiots who blog there (Greg Gutfield excepted), how could you tell?
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
01/03/2009 20:01 Comments ||
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#7
"If we want a foreign policy based on justice, for example, we ought to get busy organizing a robust anti-imperialist peace movement."
Hmmm...Mr. Ayers last attempt at an "anti-imperialist peace movement" ended up with shit gettin blowed up real good. That "Unrepentant" tag seems to fit quite well.
Governors of five U.S. states urged the federal government to provide $1 trillion in aid to the country's 50 states to help pay for education, welfare and infrastructure as states struggle with steep budget deficits amid a deepening recession. I have yet to hear a politician say "we can't afford that."
The governors of New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Ohio and Wisconsin -- all Democrats -- said the initiative for the two-year aid package was backed by other governors and follows a meeting in December where governors called on President-elect Barack Obama to help them maintain services in the face of slumping revenues.
Gov. David Paterson of New York said 43 states now have budget deficits totaling some $100 billion as tax revenues plunge.
"It's clear that the federal government needs to step in and jump-start the economy," said Gov. Deval Patrick of Massachusetts.
The latest package calls for $350 billion to create jobs by building or repairing roads, bridges and other public works; $250 billion to maintain education; and another $250 billion in "counter-cyclical" spending such as extending unemployment benefits and food stamps, which are typically a responsibility of the states. The remainder would be used to fund middle-class tax cuts, stimulate the embattled housing market, and stem the tide of home foreclosures through a loan-modification program.
Gov. Jon Corzine of New Jersey said he hoped some of the $700 billion authorized by Congress in the Troubled Asset Relief Program would be available to help the housing market.
The governors said during a conference call with reporters that the plan had been discussed with Congressional leaders and the incoming administration, which had indicated its willingness to help.
"The Obama team has been very receptive in listening to us," said Gov. Jim Doyle of Wisconsin. He said "quite a number" of other governors back the initiative.
The Republican Governors Association, however, said the level of federal aid being sought would create a burden for the future.
"The proposal by the Democratic governors goes beyond things like 'shovel-ready' infrastructure projects and is essentially a bailout of these states' general funds," Nick Ayers, executive director of the Republican Governors Association, said in a statement. "Now is the time to focus on finding cost-effective ways to provide essential services without burdening future generations with ever greater debt."
Doyle of Wisconsin said the plan would allow states to maintain essential services at about the current level until 2010, when the national economy is expected to begin a recovery.
The proposal comes amid expectations that the Obama administration, which takes office on January 20, will provide hundreds of billions of dollars in economic stimulus to boost the shrinking U.S. economy and halt the loss of jobs.
Paterson of New York said his state's budget deficit has surged to $15.4 billion currently from $5 billion in April 2008, despite a 3.2 percent cut in the education budget.
Corzine said the money called for represents about 3 percent to 3.5 percent of the economy, equivalent to the amount that the economy is expected to contract by over the next two quarters.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/03/2009 00:00 ||
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#5
They've played and now they want others to pay because the bill is due and they know a tax revolt in their small 'stan will happen otherwise. Fine. You get the money and revert to territorial status forfeiting your Senators and Representatives in Congress until you get a statehood act passed both at home and ratified in Congress [and before you raise the point about taxing and representation, just look at D.C., nuff said]. Wonder how many governors would buy into that contract?
#7
Like the auto bailout this money does not create new jobs, it is just to maintain jobs for politically connected unions.
Who pays for it? Monetizing the debt means that the middle class and foreign creditors will absorb the losses. Senior citizens living on fixed incomes will be hit particularly hard.
It should also be noted that maintaining these uneconomic jobs will prolong the recession, not shorten it. The silver lining of a downturn is the cleaning out of deadwood; bailouts maintain the deadwood at the cost of new growth. Winners will be those who have jobs; losers will be those looking for jobs. The next five years will be a poor time to come out of high school or college.
#8
So why is it that in the zillion previous economic down cycles - which only anyone over 30 can really remember, so fantastic has the economy been for so long - state govts. never needed federal bailouts? And, ahemm, did these idiots not put away a dime for a rainy day?
Is anyone going to step up and say no to the leeches (public sector "unions")? Sorry, there are many good public employees, but "unionization" is an indefensible sham in this sector, and is literally bankrupting cities, states, and now potentially (and partly) the country.
#9
Verlaine, I don't know about states asking for bailouts, but I do remember New York City asking the feds for a bailout - in 1975 or so. The headline on the New York Post was "Ford to NYC - drop dead!". Abe Beame, of an unnamed party, was mayor at the time.
Posted by: Rambler in Virginia ||
01/03/2009 13:26 Comments ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
Governors of five U.S. states urged the federal government to provide $1 trillion in aid to the country's 50 states to help pay for education, welfare and infrastructure as states struggle with steep budget deficits amid a deepening recession.
