Scott Norvell reports that Homecoming Kings and Queens are being replaced by more gender neutral "Homecoming Royalty" titles. Apparently the conventional stereotypes were excluding gay men who wanted to offically be called queens.

MSNBC takes a look at the Top 10 most overrated celebrities.

Financial advisors who compile a price index from the real cost of the gifts listed in the Twelve Days of Christmas. But they take themselves way too seriously when they concluded that: "The modest [1.6%] increase pales in comparison to last year's 19 percent increase, which may be due to lower consumer confidence this season, according to Jeff Kleintop, chief investment strategist for PNC Advisors, which published the report." Is it really fair to measure consumer confidence on the price of turtledoves and French hens?

So, you think there isn't much of a reason to carry a gun while you're shopping this holiday season? Think again:

VIRGINIA

Employee arrested: An employee at a Michaels crafts store in the Fairfax area has been arrested after ordering a customer into a back room and holding her at knifepoint, Fairfax County police said yesterday.

The incident allegedly occurred about 6:50 p.m. Sunday at the Michaels in the Pan Am Shopping Center on Nutley Street. Police said a 23-year-old woman was grabbed and escorted to the back of the store. Once there, the employee pulled a knife and ordered the woman to take off her clothes, police said. The woman was able to reason with the employee and escaped unharmed.

Police obtained a charge of abduction with intent to defile against Michael A. Thomas, 19, of the 3100 block of Babashaw Court in the Fairfax area. Police said he was being held yesterday in the Fairfax jail.

Carrying a gun for protection isn't for everyone. But I would much rather have a gun and not need it, then need a gun and not have it.

With smoking on the way out, pleasure police are looking for another "Big Tobacco". With the popularity of poker on the rise and televised Texas Hold'em poker tourneys gracing our TV screens, the pleasure-nazis are taking aim at gambling.

CNN reports that poker's popularity is rising with teens.

But Dan Romer, a researcher at the University of Pennsylvania, worries about kids who take gambling too far.

"At a minimum, it should be monitored," says Romer, director of research at the Adolescent Risk Communications Institute at the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg Public Policy Center.

He oversaw the 2003 Annenberg National Risk Survey of Youth, which found that about 8 percent of the young people surveyed showed signs of having a gambling problem.

Those results led him to conclude that schools should teach about the dangers of gambling, the same way they teach that alcohol and drugs can be addictive. He also says that government officials who oversee public gambling -- casinos and lotteries -- have a special responsibility to closely watch young people, who are allowed to gamble legally in many states as young as age 18.

Apparently, kids aren't supposed to have any fun at all.

The "separation of Church and State" crowd has reached self-parody. Patricia Vidmar, principal of the Stevens Creek School in Californiastan faces a lawsuit for ordering teachers not to teach kids about the Declaration of Independence (because it mentions God), reports World Net Daily.

For those of you that don't know much about History, the Declaration of Independence was the 'F--- You' document that our Founding Fathers sent to the King of England in 1776. What they did was tantamount to treason against the crown. They laid their lives on the line so that America could be free from British tyranny. This is the document that we are supposed to celebrate every year on July 4th. (That people are so quick to forget about the Declaration of Independence is the very reason that I have switched from calling the holiday the politically correct 'Fourth of July' to the more factually correct 'Independence Day'.)

James Taranto points out that since there would be no Constitution without the Declaration of Independence, and it would be absolutely pardoxical to find it unConstitutional. But he fails to mention that the recent attacks on the Pledge of Allegience and the Declaration of Independence will probably prove to be the "Separation" movement's undoing. I think that normal people understand that the mere mention of God is not an establishment of a national religion. Most people are probably apathetic, but nobody is going to rush to the defense of Ms. Vidmar for her attempt to expunge the Declaration of Independence from the History books.

That a California school principal would come down on the side of the PC-nazis is not at all surprising. But her rejection of anything with the word 'God' in it is as hilarious as it is sad. Would she be so quick to reject all those tax dollars which are clearly marked "In God We Trust"?

Vidmar's actions illustrate just how slippery the "seperation of Church and State" slope has become. But sometimes you just have to let things play out. These people are pretty much hanging themselves, and who are we to take away their rope.

I hope everyone had a nice Thanksgiving weekend. Although I am exhausted from the 1100 miles of driving, I had a wonderful time. I took my father to the VT-UVA game, and our seats were literally on the 50 yard line, in the fourth row back from the UVA bench. The seats were terrible, I say, just terrible. ;) We were so close to the action that everyone around us was heckling the UVA players as they came back to the bench. And we were dangerously close to getting drenched with sweat coming off the players. Not to mention that we could see and hear every hit. I also forgot my binoculars, so it was hard to see where my brother-in-law and sister were seated up in the nose-bleed section. Okay, okay enough bragging.

It has been a long and glorious season for the Hokies. They've earned a share of the ACC Conference championship and can win it outright with a victory over Miami next weekend. That is no small task, but considering they were picked to finish anywhere from 6th to 8th in the ACC during preseason they have still accomplished quite a bit. And it's nice to see that for all the grief we got from being in the 'Big Least', the unofficial ACC championship game will be a Big East reunion between Miami and VT. This is the game the Big East had been trying to set up for years. If anyone in the ACC is having buyer's remorse, it has to be Florida State who is used to dominating the conference.

Speaking of College Football, Stewart Mandel notes that the number of bowl eligible teams is dangerously low. There are 56 available slots, with only 57 eligible teams. That number could drop to an even 56, if Hawaii loses to Michigan State.

All of which means that if your team finished with a winning record, it's all but guaranteed to wind up somewhere this bowl season. Therefore the Mid-American Conference, which has never before garnered more than two invites in the same year -- and which a year ago saw a 10-win Northern Illinois team get left at home -- could have as many as six this year (Miami of Ohio, Toledo, Bowling Green, Northern Illinois, Marshall and Akron), while Connecticut and Troy (formerly Troy State), both just a few years removed from I-AA, likely will be making their first-ever bowl trips.

Mandel notes that this is the same bowl system which is so sanctimonious that it cannot possibly be given up for a college football playoff.

When I was a young lad, my father was a Navy chief. Since he was away for six months out of the year, my mother never bothered to celebrate Thanksgiving. In fact, it wasn't until my sister first attended grade school that we had even heard of Thanksgiving. Apparently she came home one day and asked my mom what this "Thanksgiving" thing was that she'd been hearing about.

Ever since then, we've been celebrating Thanksgiving together. This year we will celebrate with four generations. My sister will be flying in from the left coast with my little nephew who was born just over 6 months ago. My grandfather will be driving up from the deep South to join us as well. I'll be traveling today to join them all.

Ravenwood's Universe will be shutting down over the holiday. No new content will be posted until at least Monday morning, which is a good thing. Rather than reading websites, you should be spending time with your family and being thankful for everything that is good in your life.

Personally, I encourage everyone to live by The General's motto.

Live the good life. Drink, smoke, gamble, feast, joke, fornicate and be tolerant of those who do. Take risks and thrive for the good challenge. Work hard and play hard without going over the edge. Live in the moment. Believe in moderation in all things, including moderation. Live it up!

Life is finite. You might as well enjoy it while you can.

Here's to you and yours.

The state of Maryland is upset that so many people are driving into Virginia to buy cheap cigarettes. Fox 5 News reports that taking more than two packs of cigarettes into Maryland is a felony, and that you aren't even allowed to pass through the state with more than one carton. At issue is the profit margins. A carton of cigarettes in Virginia costs just $22. In Maryland it goes for $40. Drive a little further up the road to New York City, and that carton is worth $75. The profit on a carload of cigarettes going to New York City runs into the thousands of dollars.

In fact, the profit is so high that drug dealers are giving up their trade to smuggle cigarettes. And rather than going to state taxes, much of that money funds organized crime and even terrorism.

But they shouldn't blame Virginia. States like Maryland who charge $1 a pack, and cities like New York who charge $3 a pack should have seen this coming. NYC Mayor Bloomberg, a Republican, balanced his budget with cigarette taxes and had planned on bringing in a financial windfall. Instead, smuggling and buttlegging are on the rise, and people are even dying in gangland turf wars.

Another irony is that illegal buttlegging takes government completely out of the loop. Gang-bangers selling illegal cigarettes on the street won't be checking IDs to make sure that they aren't selling to children. Smoking bans and sin taxes are making cigarettes more accessible to young people than before.

"We're absolutely reviled around the world, as we should be. Our only friends are war criminals" -- Chris Hedges of the New York Times, saying that America sucks and that our only friends are war criminals like Ariel Sharon and Vladimir Putin.

Taking a break from their typical 'dog bites man' shark attack stories, the AP is reporting that a school of dolphins kept a group of swimmers from becoming lunch. (full story below)

A New Zealand lifeguard says it was a group of dolphins that did the life-saving when he and some other swimmers were threatened by a shark.

Rob Howes says he was swimming with his 15-year-old daughter and two friends when a group of dolphins started circling the swimmers and herding them into a tight group.

He didn't know why they were doing it -- until he spotted a great white shark cruising toward them.

Howes told a newspaper that the dolphins "pushed all four of us together by doing tight circles around us." When he tried to drift away from the group, two of the bigger dolphins herded him back.

He says seven dolphins stayed with them for 40 minutes, swimming in circles and slapping the water with their tails.

Do you suppose the shark goes back and tells his shark-buddies about the ones that got away?

Now that the British people have ceded their right to self defense, and to keep and bear arms, the government is inching toward totalitarianism. Kim notes that with their latest piece of legislation gives the government nearly unlimited power.

It looks as though the Brits have finally nailed the coffin closed on freedom, with the passage of the Civil Contingencies Act (CCA). I'll spare you the reading of it -- I already did the heavy lifting -- and point out that it basically says the following:

1. government can do pretty much anything it wants in the event of an emergency;

2. government will decide what constitutes an emergency; and

3. there's no way the citizenry can gainsay any of it.

The only thing left that stands between civil freedom and a police state is the benevolence of the government.

Keeping with the theme that everything is Bush's fault, detractors are now blaming President Bush and his war in Iraq for the NBA fight in which Indiana Pacer Ron Artest entered the stands and started punching people.

This is just a reflection of today's violent society, said University of Massachusetts at Boston sociologist Simak Movahedi.

In the hippie '60s, people took their cues from the peace and love that were in the air; now the war in Iraq and other factors make fans and players more prone to violence, Movahedi said.

Ahh, if we could only turn back the clock to the 60s. Bill Russell, Wilt the Stilt, and the Boston Celtics.

They'd have to wear those tight shorts though.

Okay, so some printer manufacturers have been caught encoding fingerprints and other unique identifiers into their products. And yes, those printed pages could ultimately be tracked back to you.

Still, I'm not going to get too upset over this. After all, it only affects a small percentage of printers. Most printer owners don't have have color laser printers, and they aren't used for regular printing anyway. Sure, the First Amendment allows for printing and whatnot, but the Founding Fathers never could have envisioned technology like this. These hi-capacity printers are capable of indiscriminately spraying out sheets at more than 10 pages per minute. And they are so simple to use with just one click of the mouse.

With all the fears about counterfeiting and identity theft, I think that only agents of the government can be trusted with such dangerous technology. At a bare minimum, we should have some common sense printer control, including some sort of registration scheme.

I honestly think - and I am not an expert on the amendments - I think the only people in this nation who should be allowed to own these high quality laser printers are government agencies like the IRS. I don't care if you want to print in color, I don't care if you think it's your right. I say, 'Sorry. It is 2004, we have had enough as a nation. You are not allowed to own a color laser printer and if you do own one, I think you should go to prison.'

Does anyone else think it's strange that the Expos, soon to be renamed Nationals, picked a red, white, and blue 'W' logo for their team?

What does Bush know, and when did he know it?

In related news, I heard on the radio today that Ron Artest and his supporters are blaming the NBA fight on the culture of violence created by the war in Iraq. Is there ANYTHING for which they won't blame President Bush? (I'll post a link when/if I find one.)

Not to mention that Kurt Busch (a distant cousin perhaps?) won the Winston Cup this year in NASCAR. Clearly the President and his administration are controlling major league sports.

If you are traveling by air this holiday season, you might get a little extra thrill:

In late September, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) began allowing security checkpoint screeners to manually pat down women's breasts and the genital and derriere regions of both sexes during searches. The point is to find hidden explosives while machines that might perform the job are still being tested. "I know it's not pleasant," says Rep. John Mica, chairman of the House aviation subcommittee, "but until we get the technology, what are the options?"

Something tells me that the good looking young females are more likely to require extra screening.

The CATO institute has a Social Security Privatization Calculator. They illustrate just how much better people will fare if they are permitted to put their contribution to Social Security into a private retirement account instead.

A person aged 35 and making $50,000 would get back $22,870 when they retire at age 67. If they put their half of the contribution (6.2% of their income) into a private account, they could expect to get back $46,044 a year. (All dollars are in 2004 dollars.) For a person aged 25, your benefits would be $25,066 vs. $71,881 respectively.

Keep in mind that your employer would still be paying 6.2% of your income into Social Security on your behalf. And of course for blacks and minorities who are much less likely to live to age 67, your payout under social security is zilch.

CNN reports that 'hate crimes' are on the rise in the United States. 'Hate crimes' are just like regular crimes, except that the bad guy really really didn't like his victim.

The overall total of 7,489 hate crime incidents reported in 2003 was slightly above the number reported in 2002.

And here's another one:

Police in Atlanta were called to a dormitory at Emory University and spent an hour investigating and taking photographs of dry erase boards on which someone had scribbled the word "gay," reports the Emory Wheel.

Of course most telling is that only about 16% of the law enforcement agencies reporting statistics to the FBI reported any so-called 'hate crimes'. So as more and more agencies start to report them, they can cry wolf that 'hate crimes' are increasing even more.

Last week a U.S. Marine was removed from the front lines for shooting a "mostly dead" terrorist. You couldn't miss it because it was splashed all over the front page of every newspaper in America. But here's something you might have missed.

The US military says Marines in Fallujah have shot and killed an insurgent who engaged them as he was faking being dead, a week after footage of a marine killing an apparently unarmed and wounded Iraqi caused a stir in the region.

"Marines from the 1st Marine Division shot and killed an insurgent who while faking dead opened fire on the marines who were conducting a security and clearing patrol through the streets," a military statement said.

For some reason this doesn't seem to have made the U.S. papers.

Tragically, five Wisconsin hunters were killed this weekend, and the Violence Policy Center couldn't be happier. It gives them perfect ammunition to advance their extremist anti-gun agenda.

And they didn't waste any time issuing their press release calling for re-activation of the 1994 Clinton Gun Ban (which didn't even include this type of rifle). Their headline trumpets "Armed Hunters No Match For SKS Assault Rifle". They also updated their SKS fact sheet in record time, to include this tragedy.

Aside from extremely bad taste, the VPC continues to spread the usual lies and misinformation about firearms.

• The SKS is not an assault rifle. It is a venerable and inexpensive semi-automatic rifle that is over 60 years old.

• They have claimed for years that SKS rifles are no good for hunting, yet here is a guy hunting with one.

• The hunter's rifles were most likely much more powerful than the weak (for a .30 caliber) 7.62x39mm SKS.

• The hunter's rifles were most likely unloaded. Hunters don't usually lock and load until they are in place and ready to wait for game to wander by.

• The hunters were probably caught completely by surprise, considering they were out there hunting and not likely thinking about self-defense.

Of course, I would expect nothing less from the gun fearing wussies who never met a ban they didn't like. Rather than pushing for enforcement of existing laws (like the one against murder) they continue to call for sweeping gun bans.

(Hat tip to reader: Steve Scudder)

International's CXT pickup truck is big. How big? Well...

Based on a platform that the International Truck and Engine Corporation uses for building dump trucks and snowplows, the CXT stands 9 feet tall, 8 feet wide and 21.5 feet long. The top of the bed sits more than 6 feet high. CXT's closest siblings are 20-ton haulers used by construction companies, governments and waste industries.

Take a look at how it towers over the people standing next to it.

(Click to enlarge)

That's camouflage paint (not mud), by the way.

(Click to enlarge)

The CXT weighs 14,500 lbs, but still gets up to 10 miles per gallon and 540 ft-lbs of torque from it's 7.6 liter diesel powerplant.

There's a bit of a dogfight going on over the first pooch. Apparently newspaper outlets like the Washington Post are upset because the Christmas video made by Barney, the Presidential First Dog, will be made available to broadcast networks but not media websites.

"The justifications we have been given are that (1) the White House wants to drive 'eyeballs' to the White House site and (2) the White House is concerned that the video might appear 'all over' if it gave it to WashingtonPost.com and other online news sites," [Washington Post's Doug Feaver] wrote last December. "I think you will agree that neither of these attempted justifications is substantial and neither justifies the White House's discrimination against online news sites."

The plot for this year's Barney movie has not yet been set.

Ever wonder how much a 10-kiloton nuke would impact your neighborhood? Now you can create your own blastmap.

Personally, my close proximity to Washington D.C. convinced me to put together a go bag, complete with first aid kit, survival kit, MREs, bottled water, and a various assortment of other survival gear. It won't do me much good if I take a direct hit, but should there be some sort of governmental chaos in the future, you can rest assured that I am well prepared. Then again, given my reputation for firearms I have already had several people tell me they are headed over to my place if the shit hits the fan. Maybe I should pack for a few more mouths to feed.

I cannot help but grin when I read about the Chilean's misunderestimation of President Bush. If you've been under a rock for the past few days and haven't heard, apparently the Secret Service got into a bit of a tussle with Chilean security guards. Geek commends the Secret Service for handling themselves professionally.

It looks like the Chileans were taking some sort of a macho bullshit stand, which W solved quite gracefully.

It turns out there was some contention regarding security arrangements, and they all saw this confrontation coming, which fills in the blanks and explains to me why it didn't escalate to a gunfight in short order, as my standing presumption would be that any attempt to cut off the president from his guard was a prelude to an assassination attempt.

I gotta applaud the secret service for striking the appropriate balance and pace of escalation here, their recognition that their role is at least partly diplomatic as well as tactical has shone through.

Meanwhile James Taranto has this hilarious account:

The [Washington Post] quotes Marcelo Romero, a Chilean reporter: "All of us journalists agree that President Bush looked like a cowboy. It was total breach of protocol. I've seen a lot of John Wayne movies, and President Bush was definitely acting like a cowboy." Apparently some journalists think that's a bad thing.

Neal says we should contrast this with how Senator John Kerry treated his Secret Service detail:

Remember when one of his Secret Service agents bumped into him while he was snowboarding and John Kerry called him an S.O.B? Compare that little episode with Bush's actions here. It's obvious that the president appreciates those that risk their lives to protect him.

And, in case you missed it, The Daily Recycler has the video.

Just when you think you've heard everything, San Francisco is considering charging for grocery bags. (Of course, this is a regressive tax that would impact the poor the most.)

City officials are considering charging grocery stores 17 cents for each grocery bag to discourage the use of plastic bags.

More than 90 percent of consumers choose plastic bags, which are blamed for everything from clogging recycling machines to killing marine life and suffocating infants. But the fee would also apply to paper bags to help reduce overall waste.

Promoting a healthy environment "means we need to help change people's patterns, and that even means their shopping patterns," said incoming city official Ross Mirkarimi (Green Party), who will join the Board of Supervisors in January. "This is a sensible user fee."

Just what we need; city officials who want to change people's behavior. How about we pass a law that says that any lawmaker supporting a tax increase be subjected to public tarring and feathering. We could march them out to the city square, strip them down, and liberally apply hot tar and feathers. I mean, we need to help change lawmaker's patterns, and that even means their taxing patterns.

Congress was gracious enough to extend the moratorium on internet access taxes. That means that your high speed internet or dialup bill will remain free of excise taxes and fees; for the time being.

But some lawmakers are crying foul over their inability to seize more of your hard earned dollars.

...some lawmakers said it would require states to raise taxes in other areas to make up for the millions of dollars they would lose as telephone and other services migrate to the Internet.

Such is the typical government response. If you shift your spending from a high tax area to a low tax area, the government is losing money.

Anti-tax lawmakers wanted the tax ban to be permanent, but they were unable to get support and had to settle for a three-year moratorium.

North Carolina Democratic Rep. Mel Watt said he would help Sensenbrenner make the ban permanent in the next session if the Republican would allow states to tax online sales.

Geez, Democrats like Watt never met a tax they didn't like. I bet he'd gladly give up the monthly access fee in exchange for being able to extend their tax arm across state lines to start taxing interstate commerce.

I haven't been to the public library in years. While I love to read, I prefer to just buy the book and add it to my own personal collection. I'm the same way with DVDs, and I think that at the heart of the matter is the inconvenience of returning the item.

Of course, what is now just an inconvenience may soon become a crime if some librarians get their way.

Keeping library books too long could soon land some readers in jail.

Frustrated librarians want the worst offenders to face criminal charges and up to 90 days behind bars.

"We want to go after some of the people who owe us a lot of money," said Frederick J. Paffhausen, the library's system director. "We want to set an example."

Undoubtedly, the ACLU will fight this as aggressively as they have for the right to surf kiddie porn.

End of the year spending bills usually contain so much crap, that the lawmakers who are voting on them don't even know what's in them. This year's lame duck spending bill contains language that would allow committee chairmen the right to view anyone's tax return. (Even Theresa Heinz-Kerry's)

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said Sunday that "accountability will be carried out" against whoever slipped a provision into an omnibus spending bill that would have allowed two committee chairmen to view the tax returns of any American.

The language was caught and removed in the Senate on Saturday, but the House will have to approve the fix before the spending bill can be sent to the White House for President Bush's signature.

"I have no earthly idea how it got in there," Frist said on CBS's "Face The Nation." "Nobody is going to defend this."

I'm more than a little skeptical. I'm not saying that Frist is one of them, but there are plenty of big government politicians that would love such powers.

Senator John McCain asks, "How many other provisions didn't we find in that 1,000-page bill?"

There's a reason I would never, EVER, live in California. It appears to be full of ignorant intolerant bigots who want to run their neighbor's lives.

Something as simple as a the grand opening of a single gun store in the town of Pacifica, has brought the bigots out of the woodwork; claiming that they don't want those people in their town. Here is some of the reaction:

Some argued that the mere presence of a gun store in Pacifica was of great moral concern...

"The store is one door down from her business," said Nahass. "It is a concern to her. I know the gun store is there, but can you regulate store hours? It's not easy what we have to do, but we have to do what's best for our neighborhoods." [...]

...he didn't think a gun store should be in a neighborhood shopping center...

Nancy Hall said she had eight letters from other merchants at Eureka Square who were unhappy about the gun store...

Some merchants at Eureka Square have apparently told residents that they are already experiencing a drop off in business because of the gun store, which has not yet even opened....

Speakers voiced their philosophical opposition to guns and their genuine surprise that a gun store had been licensed and accepted without any public discourse....

"I choose not to have guns in my community," said Pete Shoemaker. "That's the kind of community I want to live in." ....

Matthew Hamilton said he would have had second thoughts about moving to Pacifica had there been a gun store in town. "I was very surprised that Pacifica did not have any regulations," he said....

Gunowners are not animals. We are human beings and we have a right to exist.

People who ask me why I carry a gun need to look no further than my own local shopping mall.

Officers fired on: Two men running from Springfield Mall security officers drew weapons, and one fired two shots at the officers Thursday afternoon, but no one was struck and the men escaped, Fairfax County police said yesterday.

The two security officers had confronted the men about 4:30 p.m. in the shopping center because they were yelling at others and creating a disturbance. The men ran from the mall and the officers gave chase, police said. Once outside, one man pulled a handgun from his waistband, and the other man drew a long knife. After firing the shots, the men fled behind Franconia Road.

Carrying a gun is a bit like wearing a seat belt. I hope I'll never need it, and in all likelihood never will. Still, better safe than sorry.

Here's one that James Taranto would appreciate.

A lawyer for Roman Polanski said the filmmaker was being denied justice because he isn't allowed to sue a magazine for defamation in a British court while remaining in France.

The Polish-born director, who has lived in France since fleeing child-sex charges in the United States in 1978, is seeking to sue Vanity Fair over a 2002 article that accused him of seducing a woman while on the way to the funeral of his wife Sharon Tate, who was brutally murdered by Charles Manson's followers in Los Angeles in 1969.

Polanski wants to testify via teleconference because he knows that if he travels to England he will face extradition to the United States. A British Appeals Court has balked at his request, so Polanski thinks he is the one being denied justice.

"The depiction of Dr. Condoleezza Rice by Jeff Danziger, Pat Oliphant and Garry Trudeau as an ebonics speaking, big-lipped, black mammy who just loves her 'massa' is a disturbing trend in editorial cartoons. These cartoons take the racism of the liberals who profess respect and adoration for black Americans to a new level. It is revolting." -- Michelle D. Bernard, Senior VP of the Independent Women's Forum.

Kim du Toit thinks the PETA crowd must be wetting their pants over this photograph.

Apparently Boston bouncers are getting into the habit of beating up their customers.

"I've been waiting to get in a fight all night," police say a brazen Jose McIntyre's manager exclaimed Aug. 29 before punching 34-year-old Christopher Alley of Salem in one of five alleged bouncer beatdowns at the Faneuil Hall pub this year.

Alley, who is planning to sue the bar, was pummeled "by the bar staff," one of whom kicked him in the face and repeatedly "stomped'' on his head, according to a police report.

Alan Eisner, spokesman for The Glynn Group, which owns the bar, called staff's action against Alley "totally justified" because Alley "verbally accosted" employees.

This is not an isolated incident, and the Boston Herald has a whole laundry list of similar incidents at several different bars. Incidents like this undoubtedly happen at bars and clubs all across America.

But Boston seems to be a little slow to react. There have been "37 reports of violence against customers this year", but only 11 have yielded license suspensions. Of those, all but four were for just one day.

I'm sure the victims of these violent attacks probably brought some of it on themselves. But it's hard to justify kicking someone's face in just because you were "verbally accosted".

News Max reports that John Kerry might sue the Swift Vets' leader John O'Neill for libel. The Kerry campaign had tried to silence the Vets during the campaign, which ended up backfiring and giving them more publicity than ever.

But proving a libel suit against a public figure is no easy task. Kerry would have to not only prove the charges were false, but he would need to prove that they were made willfully with malice and negligence.

I think delving into whether or not there is any truth to the charges could be a risky strategy.

Here is an interesting tidbit I learned watching the Maryland-Virginia Tech game last night. Virginia Tech and Texas A&M have both produced 7 Congressional Medal of Honor winners. That is more than any other school except for the military acadamies.

Britain's pleasure police scored a big victory, forcing the ban of fox hunting with hounds. The centuries old sport has been outlawed because it is considered cruel to the fox, although it is still legal to shoot the little bastards as much as you want.

The divisive fox and hound debate has raged on for years in Britain. Hunting is considered a "popular country sport that is despised by many urbanites." So here you have a classic case of urban dwellers who want to force their way of life onto rural Britannia. They don't like hunting and they don't want anyone else to do it either. Typical of the pleasure police, you have an oppressive majority rule that consists of people that despise hunting, combined with those that don't hunt and are thus apathetic to the freedoms of those that do.

I'm reminded of the much revered and dearly departed comedian Jerry Clower, who used to have an axiom about coon hunting (the redneck equivalent of fox hunting). Mr. Clower used to say that hunting with dogs at least gave the prey a fighting chance that he wouldn't ordinarily have. A treed coon could either stay up there and get shot, or climb down, whip all those dogs, and walk away.

I think the fox would agree.

It's nice to see that I'm not the only one that thinks the whole ABC-MNF thing is overblown. I understand that kids watch the game and that it airs starting at 6:00 in the West. But the innuendo didn't seem any more harsh than anything else you see on TV.

This dovetails with last week's Saving Private Ryan kerfuffle. People get upset over language and nudity, but don't say much at all about the murders and killings that are so prominently displayed on TV night after night. How many cities have their own CSI show now?

We have shows about wife swapping, marrying millionaires, and divorce court on prime time TV. We also have Jerry Springer, gangsta rap, and the annual SI Swimsuit issue. But flash one boob* during a football game and all hell breaks loose.

*And no, I'm not referring to the periennial boob, Terrell Owens.

Why bother to reduce spending when you can just borrow more? That seems to be the mantra of the federal goverment which just voted to increase their borrowing limit to over $8 Trillion. Tax-cut and spend Republicans in the Senate overwhelmingly approved the measure, while Democrats seemed to come out on the side of fiscal responsibility.

A divided Senate approved an $800 billion increase in the federal debt limit Wednesday, a major boost in borrowing that Sen. John Kerry and other Democrats blamed on the fiscal policies of President Bush.

The mostly party line, 52-44 vote was expected to be followed by House passage Thursday. Enactment would raise the government's borrowing limit to $8.18 trillion - $2.23 trillion higher than when Bush became president in 2001, and more than eight times the debt President Reagan faced when he took office in 1981.

In his first remarks on the Senate floor since his presidential bid ended in defeat two weeks ago, Kerry, D-Mass., said his former opponent had presided over "the worst fiscal turnaround in our nation's entire history."

He was referring to the change from the $5.6 trillion in surpluses that were projected for the next 10 years when Bush took office in 2001, to the $2.3 trillion in deficits now estimated for the coming decade. Kerry and other Democrats complained that those bills will have to be paid by future generations.

"This can be called a birth tax, a birth tax that is dumped on the back of every American child unwillingly," said Kerry, who voted against the borrowing increase.

Hearing that, you would almost think that the Democrats are wary about the ever increasing size of the federal government. Almost.

Democrats may not want Republicans borrowing any more money, but they don't want them to cut spending either.

Democrats complained that the bill - which will let non-defense, non-domestic security programs grow by about 2 percent next year - was too stingy. They said that clean water grants, the National Science Foundation and federal subsidies for hiring local police officers were all being cut from last year and that funds for education, biomedical research and veterans health care were inadequate.

By cut they mean not increasing as much as they would like. (Remember, top Democrat and soon to be ex-Senator Tom Daschle actually said that his 3.1% increase in pay was actually a pay cut.)

So on one side we have Republicans who, while letting Americans keep more of the money they earn through lower taxes, continue spending like there's no tomorrow. On the other side we have the Democrats who want to use the threat of lethal force to seize more of our money, while at the same time spending like there's no tomorrow.

I get the feeling that if we don't elect more small government conservatives, there might actually be no tomorrow.

This lady's lucky not to be in contention for a Darwin Award.

A Pennsylvania woman who was struck by a train has sued the rail company - for failing to warn her that trains travel on railroad tracks.

Patricia M. Frankhouser filed suit on Nov. 4 seeking damages in excess of $30,000 from Norfolk Southern Corp., according to the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.

Last January, Frankhouser was hit by a train as she walked along railroad tracks in her hometown of Jeannette, Pa., a southeastern suburb of Pittsburgh.

Amazingly, she came away from the encounter with only a broken finger, some cuts and, according to the lawsuit, "pain."

Apparently, however, the incident was traumatic enough for her to hire a lawyer.

"Defendant's failure to warn plaintiff of the potential dangers negligently provided plaintiff with the belief she was safe in walking near the train tracks," Frankhouser's suit asserts.

It goes on to state that Norfolk Southern, based in Norfolk, Va., should have posted signs warning passersby "of the dangers of walking near train tracks and that the tracks were actively in use."

While Norfolk and Southern will undoubtedly settle out of court, the evidence for a loser pays legal system continues to mount.

One of the worst uses of taxpayer dollars ever.

Berkeley tolerates its homeless people, and takes good care of their stuff when they abandon it in shopping carts.

Not only does the city pack carts and other belongings into a huge container in case folks want it back -- it also deep-freezes them for as long as 90 days.

About a year ago, Berkeley bought a 40-foot-long, 8-foot-wide refrigerated container for $8,200 after public works officials complained about vermin infesting carts stored at the city's outdoor corporation yard.

The city signed a five-year, $61,500 lease with Caltrans for land under the University Avenue overpass at Interstate 80 to put the container on, and ran power to the unit.

The answer is: The Holy Flame Pentecostal Church quoted this carpetbagging politician as saying, "of course, I always take time to worship God in as evangelical a way as is feasible, given time and location constraints. As you know, I consider myself an evangelical Christian, really a Christian conservative, if you want to know the truth, so it's nice to be 'home' again in the South..."

Who is Hillary Clinton?

Hillary went on to say that the South is "my quote-unquote home even though I live in New York most of the time. Well, Washington, D.C., most of the time, actually, but if I'm not there I'm in New York, of course, but always thinking about being here, in the South, my spiritual home, where I shared so many wonderful evangelical . . . moments and . . . events. Can you read that back to me?"

(Credit Pat Oliphant in the Washington Post)

Hat tip to the Godfather.

UPDATE:

He did it again:

WATCH, a consumer group that usually informs parents about choking and suffocation hazards in toys, included a toy gun in this year's list. But rather than come up with any real dangers posed by such a toy, they simply spew antigun bigotry:

"In today's world, there is no excuse for outfitting children with realistic toy weapons designed to produce dangerous and unnecessary thrills."

(Click for screenshot of the full page)

UPDATE: Bruce has more. A lot more. Apparently the WATCH guy is a big time personal injury trial lawyer and (of course) a John Edward's supporter. Since Bruce has his address, I recommend we buy a bunch of those toy guns and pass them out to kiddies in his neighborhood. I'm in for $50. That's 9 kids right there.

Neal Boortz points out that WMD has been found in falluja. Some 40 vials of Sarin, enough to kill thousands of people were found in a briefcase. Oh yeah, and the markings are in German and Russian.

The media is barely reporting this. (see slide two) If you don't have flash, here is a screencap.

FYI, this isn't the first time WMD has been found in Iraq, nor is it the first time it's largely been ignored.

The United Kingdom is preparing to ban fags from all bars and restaurants. One government official was magnanimous:

"This is a sensible solution, I believe, which balances the protection of the majority with the personal freedom of the minority in England," Reid said, outlining the legislation he envisions. The proposal must be approved by Parliament.

Here's hoping they defeat the ban.

I'm shocked at how the media is mishandling the flap over a Marine who shot an Iraqi terrorist in Falluja. This statement from CNS News is pretty much representative of the way most media outlets are reporting the story:

The U.S. military is investigating whether a wounded, unarmed Iraqi insurgent was shot in the head at close range by a U.S. Marine on Saturday.

There is no doubt the Iraqi terrorist was shot in the head. It was on video. What is in doubt is whether or not the terrorist was even alive. If he was still alive, how wounded was he, and what were his motives. These questions may never be answered.

But one thing we know for sure is that this terrorist won't be killing any more American troops.

Following up on something I asked yesterday, unbeknownst to me at the time, Chris Matthews had already levied the 'war crimes' charge against our Marines. Also note how Chris characterizes the terrorists in Falluja.

Well, let me ask you about this. If this were the other side, and we were watching an enemy soldier, a rival--I mean, they're not bad guys, especially--just people that disagree with it. They're in fact the insurgents fighting us in their country.

If we saw one of them do what we saw our guy do to that guy, would we consider that worthy of a war crimes charge?

One man's Saudi/Jordanian/Syrian/Iraqi terrorist beheading civilians and shooting women in the head is another man's freedom fighter. (If fire fighters fight fire, and crime fighters fight crime, what do freedom fighters fight?)

UPDATE: They have since changed their original headline, but the story still reads: "She is considered more of a hard-liner than Secretary of State Colin Powell, who was out of step with more hawkish members of Bush's national security team." Are they trying to subtly call Dr. Rice a Stepin Fetchit?

And apparently so do the poor: Record high number of millionaires.

I hope to get there some day myself, but right now I'm still about a million dollars shy.

The Motion Picture Ass. of America together with the Recording Industry Ass. of America wants to criminalize file sharing. They are pressing the lame duck Congress to pass a bill that will mete out jail time to people making songs or movies available on the internet. That means those MP3s on your hard drive could get you up to 5 years at Club Fed, as well as civil damages.

The law would also mean that prosecutors do not have to prove willfull intention to distribute content, and could be a death blow for fair use rights.

At the center of it all is money, with the RIAA and MPAA acting as if they're being robbed. But the numbers just don't add up:

The recording industry has seen its sales and profits plummet as the popularity of peer-to-peer file swapping has risen. Compact disc sales fell from a high of $13.2 billion in 2000 to $11.2 billion in 2003, according to the Recording Industry Association of America, which put much of the blame on an exponential increase in file sharing. CD sales bounced back in early 2004, but have not reached their previous high levels, the RIAA said.

Plummet? Really? $13.2 Billion to $11.2 Billion is a drop of about 15% over three years. Considering we went through a recession starting in 2000, that hardly seems like much of a "plummet". Combine that with the dearth of creativity and it actually seems rosy.

This is the same recording industry that relies heavily on bubble-gum pop artists who no longer even sing at their own concerts. This is the same movie industry that relies heavily on remakes, never ending sequels, TV and cartoon spinoffs, and flash and trash.

It doesn't take a genius to figure out why their sales figures are down.

UPDATE: I said it before, I'll say it again: Take this as an example that they just don't get it:

The Big Easy Movie on DVD -- $5.99
The Big Easy Soundtrack on CD -- $15.99

Virginia's governor and former governors are whining about term limits. It's not exactly surprising, considering politician's usual aversion to anyone placing limits on their power. Virginia Governors are not allowed to run for re-election, although they can sit out 4 years and run again.

Refusing to allow a governor to run for a second consecutive term, he said, is "a great distortion of the politics of the state" and should be fixed now.

"What we want is the opportunity for the governor to go back to the people and make their case," [former Governor James] Gilmore said. "The people are very largely disenfranchised."

That's idiotic. The voters are still allowed to vote. They are no more disenfranchised than they are because Bill Clinton, Arnold Schwarzenegger, or anyone under age 35 cannot be elected President. Disenfranchisement used to mean that you were being denied your legal rights or priviledges. Since November of 2000 it has morphed into a buzzword that usually means politicians aren't getting their way. It is very quickly becoming Godwin's Second Law.

But former Governor Gilmore is not alone in his criticism. Sitting Governor Mark Warner also would very much like to serve a second term.

Two years ago, Warner failed in a bid to persuade lawmakers to remove the restriction.

Warner's chief of staff, William Leighty, told the panel that the governor still is hopeful that the succession limitation can be removed.

Any change in term limits should come with the stipulation that it cannot benefit sitting politicians. To illustrate just how desperate politicians are when it comes to political power, you need to look no further than the American Northwest, were lawmakers have their own private Idaho:

In 1994, Idaho voters instituted term limits through a voter referendum. The measure passed with 59% of the vote.

Stunned, lawmakers put the measure on the ballot again in 1998. Despite a brutal campaign of political rhetoric and lies, the Idaho voters reaffirmed the measure with 54% of the vote, in favor of term limits.

Not to be dissuaded, lawmakers sued to overturn the term limits in 1999, on the grounds that term limits unconsitutionally denied voters the right to suffrage. The Legislature won their lawsuit, and term limits were struck down.

The decision was appealed to the Idaho Supreme Court, which ruled that the term limits law was indeed constitutional, and term limits were upheld.

Just days after the Idaho Supreme Court affirmed the term limits referendum, the Legislature drafted a bill to override the term limits. Naturally it passed, and term limits were repealed.

Enter the Governor. The Governor sided with the will of the people, and vetoed the legislation. Term limits were upheld.

Within 36 hours, the Legislature overrode the Governor's veto. Term limits were repealed.

Down but not out, the citizens of Idaho have put a referendum on the 2002 ballot to restore term limits AGAIN.

Unfortunately for Idaho, the confusing ballot referendum (yes meant no, no meant yes) combined with the legislators nearly unlimited use of tax dollars for the campaign, resulted in term limits being defeated. In my mind, it was one of the greatest examples of just how far American politicians will go to hold onto power.

Fortunately for Virginia, the part-time legislature is in favor of Gubernatorial term limits. They view it as a checks and balances system on the Executive Branch and aren't likely to give in.

Generally speaking, career politicians are a scourge on society, and on some days rounding them all up for a good tar and feathering doesn't sound like a bad idea.

All hell is breaking loose in the media over this Marine that shot a fallen terrorist in Iraq. Some in the media are saying the terrorist was "wounded"; the extent of which we may never know.

The way I have it figured, this is a war. Our boys had been playing nice in the past, but the terrorists don't play by any rules of engagement. They have been routinely feigning injury or death, waiting for our soldiers to get close, and then attacking them. If this guy was dead, who cares if he was shot one more time? If this guy was feining death in hopes of attacking our guys up close, he deserved to be sent straight to hell. If he was truly injured and had given up fighting, he has only his fellow terrorists to blame for giving our Marines itchy trigger fingers.

Our boys shouldn't take any chances, and if it comes down to a choice between a dead Iraqi terrorist or a dead Marine, I say no quarters. The only way to make the terrorists think twice about their dirty tactics is to make them ineffective. They pulled this Marine off the line, I hope it was to give him a medal.

By the way, how long before someone starts calling this a war crime?

If I were an alumnus of Benedict College, I would be furious. Their adaptation of a "Success Equals Effort" grading policy, where students are graded on showing up to class rather than actual test scores, could ruin the reputation of their degrees.

It's possible for freshmen at Benedict College to pass their classes, even if they fail every written exam.

That's because 60 percent of their final grade is just showing up and participating in class. The other 40 percent of their grade is earned through traditional test-taking and academic performance during their freshman year.

When I first started college, teachers were not permitted to grade on attendence at all. When I took Calculus, I showed up to a grand total of four classes (the exams) and ended up with the second highest grade in the class. I knew the material inside and out, and had I not wanted the easy A, I probably would have just taken the final exam for credit. Under Benedict's policy, I probably would have received one of the worst scores in the class.

Contrast this with my Ancient and Medieval Philosophy class. I showed up every day, held a solid C average on the quizzes, and bombed the midterm paper with a whopping 14%. My professor said that I approached it wrong. Since it counted 1/3 of my grade, it was highly improbable that I would pass the class. I would have to ace everything from then on, just to get a D-. In all seriousness he called me into his office and recommended that I devote my time to other classes. It was a harsh reality, but sometimes that's how reality is.

The problem these kids are going to run in to is that the real world doesn't reward you just for showing up. Your boss isn't going to give you a good evaluation just because you're never late to work. They are going to want to see what you accomplished and reward you accordingly.

Teach kids that it's okay to fail, and a failure you will make.

The pleasure police are going after big tobacco again, but this time it's over secondhand smoke. The civil suit accuses tobacco companies of racketeering, and claims that they are marketing a deadly product while insisting that secondhand smoke doesn't cause cancer. Apparently the whole of the case will hinge on the government's claim that secondhand smoke does cause cancer, something scientists have been unable to prove.

The CDC, where everything from smoking to gun rights is considered a disease, the premise isn't even open to discussion. Terry Pechacek, the associate director for science at the Centers for Disease Control's Office of Smoking and Health says: "The simple fact is that this is no longer an issue of debate within the scientific community."

Of course, not everyone agrees. The World Health Organization study tried and failed to show a link between secondhand smoke and cancer. Initially the WHO tried to bury the results. But after being pressed, the WHO came out with a childish press release that basically said that secondhand smoke does so cause cancer they just couldn't prove it because of small sample size. Just last year, the British Medical Journal said that the numbers just aren't there to link passive smoke and cancer deaths.

Keep in mind that these studies were out to prove that secondhand smoke causes cancer. They started with a forgone conclusion and then set out to prove it to be true. So, when the numbers didn't add up they just ignored them.

Back to the government's case, which hinges on the "fact" that secondhand smoke causes cancer. Even the plaintiff (the government) is estimating that secondhand smoke only causes 3,000 lung cancer deaths annually in nonsmokers. Considering the sheer number of non-smokers, this is incredibly small. Compare this to the nearly 700,000 annual deaths due to heart disease, or the nearly 20,000 deaths* because of excessive consumption of alcohol. (* Alcohol-induced causes exclude accidents, homicides, and other causes indirectly related to alcohol use.)

But the point of all this is to drive us toward complete prohibition of tobacco. These are the same people who brought us the Miracle of Helena. Smoking was banned in Helena for 6 months back in 2002. Proponents of the ban claimed that hospital admissions during that period showed a sharp decline in heart attacks.

Like I said before:

It won't be long before cigarettes and tobacco are banned outright, in some cities and states. A national ban won't be far behind, and soon tobacco will be treated as an illicit drug.

When that happens, everyone will just stop smoking, right? Wrong. Cigarettes and tobacco products will go underground. As enforcement increases, prices will skyrocket and trafficking will be a lucrative business. It will also lead to more serious crimes, like murder, and money laundering. In general, crime will increase, and rather than profiting with tax revenue, governments will be spending millions to try to keep our streets tobacco free. Ironically, instead of being less accessible, cigarettes and tobacco will be more accessible than ever; especially to young children.

Andrew McCarthy offers a comprehensive look at the late Egyption murderer and terrorist, Muhammad Abdel Rahman Abdel Rauf al-Qudwa al-Husseini; more commonly known as Yasser Arafat.

Here is a pretty good video (4.8 MB) of our grunts in action in Falluja.

Red Light SCameras in Virginia may be in question. The 10-year law authorizing their use is due to expire in 2005, and the Washington Post reports that it may not be renewed. The Post mentions (several times) that more than 70% of Virginians polled support the automated revenue generators. They also point out that red light running has declined at both intersections with the cameras and those without.

Personally, I have always thought that the cameras were more about revenue than anything. The safest and cheapest way to reduce red light running is to increase the length of the yellow light, and in some locations, officials actually conspired to maximize revenue.

Even the American Automobile Association agrees, and suggests that studies be done to see if there is an increase in rear end collisions because people are unnecessarily slamming on their brakes.

Robert Novak reports that the U.N. Oil for Food scandal is turning out to be even more damning than first thought. Senator Norm Coleman's (R-Minn.) findings are starting to spell big trouble for Kofi Annan and the U.N..

Howard Kurtz has the post-election media rundown. Looking for someone to blame, the Boston Globe apparently blames Kerry's bad hearing for galvanizing his perception as a "flip-flopper".

The Boston Globe begins its big what-went-wrong extravaganza this way:

"On the afternoon of Aug. 9, John F. Kerry stood on the lip of the Grand Canyon, about to make one of the biggest mistakes of his three-year quest for the presidency. A stiff wind was blowing across the canyon, and Kerry, whose hearing was damaged by gun blasts in Vietnam, had trouble understanding some of the questions being thrown his way. But he pressed on, coughing from the pollen blowing on the breeze.

"Would Kerry have voted to authorize the use of force in Iraq, one reporter asked, even if he knew then that Iraq didn't have weapons of mass destruction? 'Yes, I would have voted for the authority; I believe it's the right authority for a president to have,' Kerry replied, as aides stood by, dumbfounded. . . .

If Kerry didn't understand the question, why did he repeat it as part of his answer? But even if you accept the premise that Kerry misspoke, isn't it interesting that when Kerry doesn't understand something it must be a byproduct of his heroic service in Vietnam. But let Bush trip over his tongue, and it must be because he's stupid.

And not to nitpick, but is the pollen count really that high in Arizona in August?

With George Bush winning the election, the global warming stories seem to be just pouring out. This week, enviroweenies are whining that melting glaciers are threatening the Alps and a local scientist. They don't really say how melting ice would destroy the mountains, but they do make wild claims about glaciers retreating faster than ever before. (Mostly during the Bush Administration.)

"Summer 2003 was the death blow for many small glaciers," [Scientist Frank] Paul said.

"When glaciers are in the retreating phase they normally lose about 30 centimeters of snow and ice a year. In the 1990s they lost about 70 centimeters a year; in 2003, they lost 3 meters," Paul said.

I said it before and I'll say it again:

In environmental terms, you cannot look at one day, one year, or even one hundred years. The climate of the earth has peaks and valleys. Have you ever heard of the Ice Age? The peak of the glacial advance was some 20,000 years ago. For those of you that go to public school, thats about 19,900 years before the dawn of the industrial revolution.

Considering climates shift over such long periods, I'm not about to worry about the so-called "damage" that my SUV does to the environment. I'm much more worried about the damage to our economy and way of life caused by wacked out eco-terrorists whose main agenda is to wreck Western civilization.

For anyone who's interested, the AP puts a name to the face. Lance Cpl. James Blake Miller says he doesn't know what all the fuss is about, "I was just smokin' a cigarette and someone takes my picture and it all blows up."

The photograph, taken by a Los Angeles Times photographer and transmitted by The Associated Press, has been printed in more than 100 newspapers and shown on network television.

Miller, 20, is shown with smudged camouflage paint and a bloody scratch on his nose, a cigarette drooping from the side of his mouth. He was exhausted and grimy after more than 12 hours of nonstop fighting.

It's hard to put my finger on exactly why I like the photo so much. Aside from the obvious pride I feel for our fighting men and women, I think it's a nice diversion from all the bad news the media usually goes out of their way to report.

Last month Miami police used a TASER gun on a 6 year old boy who was allegedly trying to hurt himself with a piece of glass. Rather than let the boy continue to cut himself, police shot him with the TASER and took him down.

I didn't think much of it at the time because it seemed justified. But now police have done it again, this time shooting a 12 year old girl with 50,000 volts because she was fleeing a truancy rap.

According to the incident report, officer William Nelson responded to a complaint that children were swimming in a pool, drinking alcohol and smoking cigars on the morning of Nov. 5.

Nelson said he noticed the girl was intoxicated and was walking her to his car to take her back to school when she ran away through a parking lot.

Nelson, 38, said he chased her and yelled several times for her to stop before firing the Taser when she began to run into traffic. The electric probes hit the girl in the neck and lower back, immobilizing her.

Nelson said he fired "for my safety along with (the girl's) safety..."

It has long been my contention that while TASERS were originally deployed as a less than lethal alternative to shooting a suspect, they are being increasingly used out of sheer laziness and intolerance. The threshold used to be that an officer's life was in danger. Now it seems as though they zap anyone who gets the least bit uppity or doesn't toe the line.

Once again, people build houses next to gun ranges and then bitch about the noise.

Denise [Rice] and her neighbors have been firing back. They've sued the range and conducted several noise tests of their own to prove the gun blasts are well over the legal limit of 65 decibels

Denise Rice: "At my location it was like 90 decibels."

Now, a judge's order may soon end the controversy by demanding the noise stop all together, which would essentially force the closure of the range.

Denise Rice: "That was never our intention to put them out of business. We just wanted peace in our neighborhood. That's why we moved here, it's scenic and so quiet."

The range has reportedly been there for decades.

UPDATE: They're throwing the bullshit flag over at Westerblog. Something about fuzzy math.

I should have known the pleasure police would go ape-shit over this photo of one of our hardened Marines enjoying a smoke after a hard day of killing terrorists. James Taranto reports that emails were pouring in to the New York Post and Houston Chronicle for blatantly marketing evil cigarettes to directly to children. (Apparently they are extremely popular in the children's demographic.)

I was shocked to see the large photograph on Nov. 10. A tired, dirty and brave Marine rests after a battle--but with a cigarette dangling from his mouth! Lots of children, particularly boys, play "army" and like to imitate this young man. The clear message of the photo is that the way to relax after a battle is with a cigarette.

The truth is very different from that message. Most of our troops don't smoke. And most importantly, this young man is far more likely to die a horrible death from his tobacco addiction than from his tour of duty in Iraq.

DR. DANIEL MALONEY
The Woodlands

I opened the Chronicle this morning and got slapped in the face by a huge picture of a "battle weary" Marine with a fine looking cigarette hanging out of his mouth.

I respect everyone's rights, but do we really need to encourage our young people to think that this is part of required military gear?

MAYNARD HOVLAND
League City
[...]

How much did Phillip Morris pay for the front cover advertisement? Thank you for continuing to encourage the development of cancer.

Mark Leininger
Manhattan

The Post's cover was horrible and crude. How could you compare our soldiers to the Marlboro Man? We are not "kicking butt" in Iraq. We are in an unjustified war with a people who will never allow democracy to come to their country.

Janna Passuntino
Manhattan

I was shocked to see the front page of your newspaper. Showing a GI smoking and portraying it as being cool is disgusting, to say the least.

First of all, you are promoting smoking, even though it is a health hazard. Secondly, our brave men and women are fighting a tough war in Iraq, and to show them as you did does not do them justice.

Maybe showing a Marine in a tank, helping another GI or drinking water would have had a more positive impact on your readers. Smoking should be outlawed, not endorsed.

Ali Mahdi
North Brunswick, N.J.

I'm reminded of my own blissful childhood. We had both realistic looking toy guns to play with, and candy cigarettes; both of which have since been killed by the pleasure police. I still have the toy guns, which I hope to some day pass on to my own children. I don't have any candy cigarettes, so I guess I'll have to give them the real thing.

Scott Norvell reports that a school fundraiser had to be canceled due to the school's zero tolerance weapons policy.

A high school in Wisconsin was forced to call off a fundraiser when school officials realized that the fishing kits donated to the effort contained filet knives and would not be allowed on campus because of the school's zero-tolerance policy, reports the Associated Press.

A local businessman donated the 2,200 kits - dubbed Catch'Em, Cook'Em and Eat'Em -- to the Germantown High School band so they could sell them to raise money for a trip to Scotland in the spring. But band officials cancelled the effort when they discovered that each kit contained a six-inch filet knife.

We can't have the kiddies going door to door selling weapons, now can we. Imagine what fishermen could do if they got their hands on assault knives like those.

Apparently some lefties are serious about fleeing to Canada after Bush won re-election. At first I figured it was just post-election blues, but some liberals are actually going through with it. And Canada, says they have a lot to offer liberals:

Canada suddenly has utopian appeal for many left-leaning Americans. Its universal health care, gay rights, abortion rights, gun laws, drug laws, opposition to the Iraq war, ban on capital punishment and ethnic diversity mirror many values of the American left. Immigrants, including an estimated 1 million Americans, make up nearly 20 percent of Canada's population. The United Nations named Toronto the world's most multicultural city.

Sounds like a liberal utopia, doesn't it. I cannot wait until they realize that socialist health care means waiting 6 months to see a doctor, gun laws means paying for expensive registration programs that are ineffective and unenforced, and that high taxes and lack of tax breaks make buying a home a difficult and expensive ordeal.

And, as Michael Moore pointed out in "Bowling for Columbine" - required viewing for many lefties - in Canada there's apparently no reason to lock your door. Combine that with hockey, terrific needle exchange programs and moose - hey, what's not to love?

Well, all the extra U's (colour, neighbour ...), for one thing. It's cold. The baseball's not very good - so long, Expos. And the taxes are higher, eh?

But, as one American who has his bags nearly packed likes to say, at least the taxes go toward good causes.

"I just like their way of life a lot better, and with everything the Bush administration has done - for the American people to give him their seal of approval, it's basically the last straw," says Ralph Appoldt, a resident of Portland, in the barely blue state of Oregon.

"Canada's basic population is much more intelligent, polite and civilized. I like their way of government a lot better. Their tax dollars go to helping those who need it, instead of funneling money back up to the wealthy and feeding this huge military-industrial machine."

Ahh, the liberal credo. Confiscatory taxes are alright as long as they fund helpful programs like free clinics, "free" drug needles and socialist health care. But don't dare spend them on silly things like national defense.

I hate to break it to these lefties, but the only reason Canada (a/k/a the 51st state) can afford all these social programs is because they are under the protection of our huge military-industrial machine. Imagine where they'd be if they actually had to buy more than two tanks for national defense.

Oh, and one other thing. There's a reason that Canada's biggest export is their people.

The gun control lobby successfully preys on ignorance of firearms and gun safety to pass their restrictive laws. The Clinton Gun Ban of 1994, which expired this year, was billed as a "assault weapons" ban. They basically defined "assault weapon" as one that is scary looking. Functionality didn't matter, but if it were painted black and modeled to look like one the military might use, it was banned.

To drum up support for their ban, gun grabbers and their willing accomplices in the media conveniently blur the line between automatic assault rifles that the military uses, and semi-automatic look-a-likes that are sold to the public. Although the functionality of the guns is completely different, they would have people believe that the rifles they are banning are the same rifles that our soldiers use in Iraq and Afghanistan. They claim that killing power like that is reserved for our benevolent government.

Case in point:

An officer with the Texas Department of Public Safety had come across a man he suspected was drunk inside his car on Mile 12 North on Oct. 30. As the trooper was detaining the driver. . .the man broke free and drove away. During the chase, [the man] started firing an automatic weapon out his window. The trooper was injured when a bullet fragment ricocheted and hit his face. [...]

Law enforcement officers are worried that the Oct. 30 shooting is not an isolated incident, and that the potential for another large-scale shootout is high. Although [he] apparently got his gun illegally, law enforcement officials fear it will be easier to get them if they are legal. The expiration of the federal ban on assault weapons gives officers the feeling that criminals will have easier access to weapons, allowing them to outgun police officers.

Shame on the press for not saying exactly what type of rifle was used. Notice too, that they report the this was an "automatic" rifle, which was not even covered by the 1994 Clinton Gun Ban. I cannot believe that this is an accident. Also, they just gloss over the fact that the rifle was obtained illegally. They think that one more law for this asshole to break would have helped.

But there's more:

The six-year ban, which expired Sept. 13, made certain weapons, particularly those made to resemble military weapons, illegal to own.

They cannot even get the facts about the ban right. It was a 10 year ban stretching from 1994 to 2004.

"By lifting the ban you're telling everyone that it's OK to possess one," said Joe Garcia of STOP. "As it is, we're at a disadvantage with our issued weapons in contrast with these guys who can easily obtain assault weapons. A perfect example is what happened at Weslaco." [...]

Give me a break! The police have access to automatic rifles just like those used in the military, but somehow they we are supposed to believe that they are at a disadvantage because civilians have access to semi-auto rifles that merely look like theirs.

Garcia said that while he is a supporter of the Second Amendment that protects "the right of the people to keep and bear arms," he thinks there should be restrictions on what kind of weapons can be bought by civilians.

Talk about trying to have it both ways. It sounds to me like he only supports the right of the government to bear arms.

Zellers said STOP plans to actively lobby legislators to amend Texas laws to include stricter punishments for people who commit crimes using assault rifles.

Now he's blurring the line between "assault weapons" made to look mean and scary, and genuine automatic assault rifles. I told you it was no accident.

But wait, it gets more blatant.

"Right now what's strange about the law is that if you don't have a concealed handgun license, if you get caught carrying a handgun in your car, you can be arrested," Zellers said. "But you can have an assault rifle sitting in your car. That's perfectly legal as long as it's not automatic. It doesn't make sense."

That is strange. People should be allowed to carry a handgun in their car, permit or not. Also, there is no such thing as a non-automatic assault rifle. The very definition of assault rifle is a rifle that is an automatic.

Now, get this:

Zellers offered a suggestion for those who insist they should be able to own and carry assault rifles.

"If you have a hunting rifle or shotgun, that's fine. Those guns are made for hunting," Zellers said. "An assault rifle is made for the military. It's made for war. It's made for killing humans. There's no reason to carry a gun like that around.

"If you really want to carry around an assault rifle, go down to the army recruiting office, join, go to Iraq, relieve some of our soldiers who have been there for a year and then you can carry an assault rifle 24 hours a day."

Heinrich Himmler had a similar idea in 1936. "Germans who wish to use firearms should join the SS or the SA. Ordinary citizens don't need guns, as their having guns doesn't serve the State."

Walter Williams says the reason we are a divided nation is because so many people are dependent on big government.

The reason we've been able to live in relative harmony is that for most of our history government was small. There wasn't much pie to distribute politically.

When it's the political arena that determines who gets what goodies, the most effective coalitions are those with a proven record of being the most divisive -- those based on race, ethnicity, religion and region. [...]

The best thing the president and Congress can do to heal our country is to reduce the impact of government on our lives. Doing so will not only produce a less divided country and greater economic efficiency but bear greater faith and allegiance to the vision of America held by our founders -- a country of limited government.

Free market transactions are usually based on mutual benefit. You pay $2 for a gallon of milk because you want the milk and don't feel like buying a cow. The grocery store, on the other hand, would rather have your $2. Both sides walk away from the transaction happy.

Many government transactions, however, are based on one-sided benefit. The people that need the benefits don't pay for them, while the people that pay for them don't need them.

Obviously, some exceptions apply.

Michelle Malkin notes that while the press goes gaga over liberal minorities in politics, Republican minorities are treated as an abomination.

It appears as though the first and last gun store is opening in Pacifica.

While it seems to have surprised a lot of people, including City Council members, that a retail gun store could be granted a business license in Pacifica without any discussion or debate, the reality appears to be that other than strict state and federal regulations governing the sale of firearms, there are no special rules in Pacifica.

Four council members listened to concerned residents Monday who complained about the lack of notification and control in Pacifica over a gun store that is slated to open in Eureka Square, called a "family-oriented" shopping center by many. Of particular concern to some of the speakers was the proximity of the new gun store to such businesses as Clay Creations and DNA Comics. (Councilmember Pete De Jarnatt was absent).

The item on Monday's agenda was scheduled as a discussion to give staff direction. No decisions or mandates were made. "As council is aware, the city's zoning ordinance currently makes no distinction between the retail sale of firearms and other kinds of retail sales," Planning Director Michael Crabtree explained. "To ensure that firearms sales are properly regulated and that there is opportunity for public input when such uses are proposed, staff proposes to amend the zoning ordinance to require a conditional use permit and specify other regulations, including location criteria, for such uses."

These people need professional psychological help.

Liberal Christians are saying that conservatives don't have the monopoly on moral values.

Battling the notion that "values voters" swept President Bush to victory because of opposition to gay marriage and abortion, three liberal groups released a post-election poll in which 33 percent of voters said the nation's most urgent moral problem was "greed and materialism" and 31 percent said it was "poverty and economic justice." Sixteen percent cited abortion, and 12 percent named same-sex marriage.

Greed is one of the seven deadly sins, but materialism is nothing more than a vice. Neither of them seem like a huge moral problem, much less the nation's most urgent. And since when is poverty immoral? Are they against poor people as well as the rich? Does a nun's vow of poverty make her immoral?

Ask anyone why Martha Stewart went to jail, and they aren't likely to know. Most people mistakenly think she was busted for insider trading or fuzzy math accounting. Well, she wasn't, and now she wants help with her legal fees.

The $3.7 million figure applies to Stewart's defense on a single criminal count, a charge that she propped up the company's stock price, and therefore her own wealth, in 2002 by declaring her innocence in a personal stock scandal.

A federal judge threw out that count before it went to a jury. Stewart and her ex-stockbroker were later convicted of lying to investigators about why Stewart sold ImClone Systems Inc. (IMCL)stock in 2001.

That's right, she's in jail for 5 months for lying. The feds show up and want to ask you some questions. You haven't been arrested, and thus haven't been informed of your Miranda right to remain silent. If you tell them anything at all, you'd better tell the truth. If you say something misleading or evasive, down you go.

James Taranto notes that a message thread on Bill Maher's internet forum toys with the idea of rounding up Republicans for extermination. The message title is Shooting Republicans, ethical? Discuss and suggests that Bush supporters should be fair game.

At this point in time, would it be morally defensible to apply a "final solution" to republicans? [...]

Is it now morally excusable to organize midnight raids on republican groups in the red states and "terminate" them with extreme prejudice?

Liberals on the far left often suggest things like this, but they overlook one small detail. Conservatives have all the guns. Coming after Bush supporters like this guy, this guy, this guy, this guy, or (heaven forbid) myself, would be a HUGE mistake.

No NCAA violations here:

Four University of Memphis basketball players reported they were robbed of more than 66-thousand dollars worth of items.

Basketball players Clyde Wade, Joey Dorsey, Rodney Carney and Arthur Barclay reported the thefts.

Among the items stolen 40-thousand dollars in mink coats, 25-hundred dollar diamond earrings, and a 36-inch flat screen TV.

To steal a line from Pete McEntegart, "Apparently, conditions in Memphis are much better than the "prison" Rashad McCants claims to live in at North Carolina."

Pardon me if I don't get all choked up about Yassir Arafat's impending dirt nap.

This would certainly boost ratings for the PGA tour.

Two golf course managers and a tournament organizer were sentenced to house arrest for hosting two competitions featuring prostitutes and strippers stationed along the putting greens.

Superior Court Judge Christian F. Thierbach chided the three for their "immoral and illegal actions" at the so-called girlie tournaments in spring 2002.

More than a dozen prostitutes and strippers, including a 16-year-old girl, set up tents and advertised their services on boards, officials said. About 160 golfers paid $200 apiece to play, though some showed up without their clubs, officials said.

Talk about a fast green. How many strokes is that penalty? If you can't lay up on the green, you can always do a bump and run from the rough.

In their argument for secession, some democrats are actually trying to make the case that blue states are overtaxed compared to the social benefits they receive.

The idea isn't just a joke; one top Democrat says, "The segment of the country that pays for the federal government is now being governed by the people who don't pay for the federal government."

While I think that's fundamentally incorrect, it's funny to hear the party that ran on a platform for higher taxes turn around and bitch about paying too much tax.

It's looking more and more like D.C. baseball may be in jeopardy. D.C. City Council Chairman Linda Cropp has delayed a vote on public financing for two weeks while alternatives are looked at. At first she hoped to rebuild or renovate RFK stadium to save several hundred million dollars, but opponents say that would not revitalize Anacostia. Now she hopes to get private funding for at least $350 Million of the estimated $530 Million stadium bill.

It's a noble effort, and recent polls show that a clear majority of D.C. residents are against using taxpayer funds. But Major League Baseball doesn't want private money. Raising private money is hard, especially compared to how easy it is to seize taxpayer dollars. And when the typical cost overruns come up, politicians just go back to the well and take some more. Once the first dollar is spent, it's pretty much guaranteed.

Now, there is no good argument for using taxdollars to fund a baseball stadium. One pundit said it makes as much sense as a taxpayer funded movie theater. But Baseball has the D.C. government over a barrel and in two weeks the city council will utlimately vote to build a shiny new stadium.

But something I think needs to happen on the federal level, is that the government should rethink the antitrust exemption that Baseball enjoys. Right now, if any existing teams want a new stadium they simply extort their hometown to buy them one. If they balk at the idea, Baseball just picks up and moves someplace that will foot the bill. After all, what are they going to do; start their own team? They can't. It's illegal.

Football has had to compete with the USFL, CFL, and XFL. Despite the competition, they've come through it unscathed. Baseball is the only major league operation and the government makes sure it stay's that way. Since baseball teams are so quick to stick their hand into the public kitty, maybe it's high time they lose their special status.

Neal Boortz proposes this for the state of Georgia, but I think it would be good for any piece of legislation nationwide:

"We, the undersigned sponsors of this legislation, hereby state that it is our belief that it is more important for the government of the State of Georgia to spend the taxpayer's funds necessary for the implementation of this legislation than it is for the Georgia private and corporate citizens who actually earned this money to retain it and to use it for their own purposes."

Neal also notes that when this was first proposed in Georgia, it never even made it to committee. For some reason lawmakers don't seem interested.

Voters in California elected a "mystery man" to the school board. He never campaigned or gave any speeches, but he still managed to get 55% of the vote. Now they can't even find him to tell him he won.

Public records point to the fact that Steve Rocco really does exist.

He's a registered voter. He owns a home in Santa Ana. And he filed paperwork in July to run for the school board.

"He is not a figment of your imagination," said Christina Avila, a campaign disclosure filing officer at the Orange County registrar of voters and apparently one of the few people who can confirm his existence, because he handed his papers over to her. "He's a real man."

After that, the details start getting sketchy.

He is registered to vote, though he declined to state a party. Neighbors who have lived next door to him for years say they've seen the 53-year-old man only occasionally, when he takes out the trash from the home he shares with his parents. On the ballot, he listed his occupation as teacher and writer, though proof of either is elusive.

Neither the district nor the registrar has a phone number on file for him, and nobody answered the door at his home.

Somehow, though, without mounting a real campaign, filing a candidate's statement or showing up at a community forum, he managed to upset his formidable opponent, Phil Martinez.

Officials are trying to figure out what to do if he doesn't show up for the swearing in.

I've had nothing but trouble since upgrading Movable Type to 2.661. At the time I didn't even want to upgrade, but my webhost was having a problem with their sendmail module and insisted I try upgrading MT as a fix. Instead I ended up with multiple ping and rebuild problems.

Up until recently most of the problems were on pinging. I would rebuild an entry and start to ping, and it would time out and go 404 on me. I played around with trying to figure out the cause and eventually chalked it up to the pingees being unresponsive. That is, my server was pinging out but the remote server (ie: blo.gs, blogrolling) were timing out.

I've also gotten errors on rebuilding the Category archives. I've pretty much stopped putting posts into categories because of the rebuild errors. I cannot make it through a total Category rebuild without timing out, although all the other rebuilds are fine (individual and monthly). The category file sizes are approaching the 300-500k range so I figured maybe it was too much to handle. But I'm not entirely sure.

Today, I started getting timeouts on rebuilding, and I never even reach the ping stage. The main index does seem to rebuild, but the PDA version, XML version, and other indexes come up empty. But the odd thing is that mt.cgi times out even when rebuilding just one index file. If I try to rebuild the main index, or the PDA index it times out just the same. Also I noticed that the MT popup windows are a bit slow, my webmail is a bit slow, everything is slow. (UPDATE: Now that I bitch about it, this particular problem seems to have gone away.)

I've tried increasing the timeout variable, and not creating temp files. But none of that has worked. I might try downgrading MT from 2.661 to 2.64 where everything was running smoothly. I could also upgrade to version 3, but that might just make things worse. Then again, the site is approaching 4000 entries and 200 MB in size. I'm seriously tempted to tear the whole thing down and rebuild from scratch, but I don't really want to lose the archives. I could do a bulk import to restore the old posts, but then I would probably be back in the same boat I'm in now.

I'm also thinking of redesigning the site to make it more viewer friendly. I'm a bit tired of the jabs and criticism about the color scheme so it may be time for a change. It doesn't bother me much but I have gotten more than a few complaints. Then again I'm not the most creative person in the world and it could end up being much worse. Also, I don't want to turn into one of these guys that keeps changing the look and feel around every other week. The site should have a familiar look to it that doesn't change much over time. Hell, when I went from manual updates to Blogger to Movable Type, and from tables to CSS the look and feel hardly changed at all. In fact, the theme of the site has looked pretty much the same for the last 4 or 5 years. Oh, it's evolved slightly. I've added trackback, commenting, searching. I changed the lettering at the top to a graphic and moved from monthly to individual archives. But the basic look and feel has stayed the same. When you load the page it still screams "Ravenwood's Universe" I don't want people to come here and think they mistyped the address.

Whatever happens, it's going to have to wait a little while longer. Right now, my laptop is in the shop so I've been working off my old network server. It's good enough for posting articles, but it doesn't have photoshop installed or even MS Office. No, I'll have to wait until the laptop comes back before I try to tackle any of this.

But if I ever get over my procrastination, changes are a comin'.

As helpless victims in the U.K. scream for the restoration of their right to self defense, the gun grabbers are aiming at broadening the ban to include assault knives.

NEW laws banning high street shops from selling assault knives, machetes and other weapons could be introduced by the end of next year. [...]

The age at which young people can buy household knives and axes may also rise from 16 to 18...

Over the past four years the number of incidents involving knives has risen by 350%, and in Glasgow alone 7500 people were victims of knife crime last year.

With all the talk of blue states seceding from the Union and liberals running off to Canada, I had been looking for Kim du Toit's redrawn map of the United States. I hadn't been able to find it, but luckily Kim was kind enough to repost it.

Andy Dehnart notes that so-called "reality shows" have taken a cruel and humiliating turn.

In the past week there has been a plethora of news articles sounding the alarm about global warming. Last week I pointed out how they were trying to pin it all on George W. Bush. This week they seem to be taking a different approach. (emphasis mine)

The area around the peninsula has shown an unusually strong warming trend over the past 50 years, although Atkinson said it's not clear how that is connected to the loss of sea ice. He also said the cause of the warming isn't known. -- CNN/AP, November 3rd.

The biggest survey to date of the Arctic climate, by 250 scientists, said the accelerating melt could be a foretaste of wider disruptions from a build-up of human emissions of heat-trapping gases in Earth's atmosphere. . .Arctic temperatures are rising at almost twice the global average and could leap 4-7 Celsius (7-13 Fahrenheit) by 2100. . .And the melting of glaciers is expected to raise world sea levels by about 10 cm (4 inches) by the end of the century. -- CNN/Reuters, November 8th.

The scientific overview, prepared by a team of 300 scientists from member nations, projects that temperatures in the Arctic will rise by 8 to 14 degrees Fahrenheit in the next 100 years. If temperatures then stayed stable, the Greenland icecap would melt altogether in 1,000 years and raise global sea levels by about 23 feet. -- MSNBC, November 4th.

It predicts that over the next 100 years, global warming could increase Arctic annual average temperatures 5 to 9 degrees Fahrenheit over land and by up to 13 degrees over water. Warmer temperatures could raise global sea levels by as much as 3 feet. -- Reuters, November 8th.

So, they cannot agree on how much warming has taken place, over what period, how much the sea levels will rise, or even how many scientists wrote the damned report, but we're supposed to believe this big catastrophe is about to occur. And none of these reports seems to account for the fact that solar output is at a 1000 year high. And don't forget that the environmental movement used to be about stopping Global Cooling.

It's funny, but the only thing scientists can agree on is that they need more funding.

MSNBC notes that Ellen DeGeneres has bounced back nicely since committing career suicide by coming out of the closet.

They say timing is everything. Ellen DeGeneres was a little ahead of her time. In 1997, one year before the premiere of "Will & Grace," with all its openly gay characters, Ellen revealed on her sit-com and in real life that she's gay. Her career went into a free-fall. But with the help of a lost fish named Nemo and a white hot, Emmy award-winning talk show, owned in part by NBC Universal, Ellen has once again found success.

I've just about followed Ellen's entire career, and in her case, timing isn't everything. It helps to be able to recognize what audiences want.

I first saw Ellen doing stand-up on HBO, and thought she was brilliant. On average, female comics aren't as funny as their male counterparts (I'll probably get hammered on that one), but Ellen was definitely an exception. I was delighted to see that she was getting her own TV show, and when her primetime sitcom, "These Friends of Mine", debuted in 1993 it didn't disappoint. It was about her and her quirky friends that lived across the hall, and in this viewer's opinion it was hilarious. But after the hiatus, either Ellen or the network had retooled the show into being centered just on her. The friends were gone. The show still worked pretty well, but in light of the success of "Friends", which debuted in 1994, the new direction seemed like a huge mistake.

Still, "Ellen" was a decent sitcom and it seemed to carry the ratings for the first few years. But when Ellen announced she was a lesbian in 1997 things definitely went down hill. Some would say that Ellen was just ahead of her time. But I think the success of "Will and Grace" (which I don't watch) and downfall of "Ellen" illustrates that it wasn't her homosexuality that killed the show, rather her sudden shift of creative gears. "Will and Grace" have always had a gay theme, whereas "Ellen"'s gay theme was thrust upon an unsuspecting audience. As a regular viewer I was dismayed to see all the other cast members shoved aside as every single show became about Ellen being gay.

Personally, I could care less that Ellen is gay, and had suspected it all along. What it came down to is that I didn't want to watch a show about her being gay. I wanted to watch a show that made me laugh and whose characters I was emotionally invested in. But "Ellen" became a train wreck and just wasn't fun to watch anymore.

In the end, I'm happy to see Ellen is doing well. I've only seen her talk show a few times, but from what I've seen it's witty and very well received. I wish her the best of luck in her career and hope that she's learned to recognize what audiences want and give it to 'em in spades.

For those of you that were saying the Kobe Bryant case wasn't all about the money:

Attorneys for the woman accusing NBA star Kobe Bryant of rape said Monday they might move her civil lawsuit to California because of Colorado's strict limits on financial damages.

Lin Wood, one of the attorneys representing the 20-year-old woman, said Colorado state law makes it difficult for a plaintiff to win more than $733,000 in damages.

The plaintiff also seeks to move the suit from federal to state court to get around the financial limits.

When the train comes along, suddenly chaining yourself to the track doesn't seem like such a good idea. Consider this Frenchman a late entrant into this year's Darwin Awards.

Three months after Hurricane Charley ripped through Florida, some people are still waiting for temporary housing. CNN reports that while as many as 600 people have been placed in mobile homes, there is a demand for another 500 units. This prompted Democrat Senator Bill Nelson to wax rhetorically:

"The question that has to be asked, 90 days after the hurricane, is why are we only able to supply travel trailers and mobile homes to half the people who need them?" Nelson said.

So, here you have a demand that isn't being adequately met by supply. Why do you suppose that is?

Well Florida has laws to combat something they call "price gouging". No, they aren't going after the $8 hot dogs and $3 bottles of water at Disney World. But they are filing lawsuits to keep companies from making a profit from the Hurricane. Maybe Senator Nelson should ask Florida Attorney General Charlie Crist why he thinks out of state suppliers are reluctant to sell their much needed goods in Florida.

Related articles:
The case for price gouging II - 09/15/2004
The case for price gouging - 08/18/2004
Today's lesson: Price Gouging - 03/25/2004

Kevin Baker notices that left-wing pundits have mobilized very quickly to paint Bush supporters as gay-hating bigots.

Of course, if they really believe that, they are guaranteed to keep losing.

Exit polls seemed to be slanted in Kerry's favor, but someone they aren't favoring is Senator Clinton. According to CNN, in her home state of New York, she was shown as losing to former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani in 2008.

When asked if Sen Clinton would make a good President, 48% say yes to 50% no. Giuliani got 52% yes, and 46% no. And this was in the democrat stronghold of New York.

Of all the election predictions flying around before the election, betting sites turned out to be the most accruate.

It's bad enough that the residents of D.C. are defenseless against muggers and rapists, but now they have another predator to watch out for: coyotes.

News of the sightings -- and of the dog attacks -- is zooming across the upper Northwest neighborhoods west of the park. Some people wonder whether their children or small pets are at risk. Others are amazed to see a bit of the Wild West on city streets.

When coyotes came around in the wild west, citizens took out their rifles and took care of the problem. In D.C., they hope the police arrive before their children or dogs are eaten.

The New York Times rather nonchalantly admitted that the media is taking direction from the Kerry campaign. If you stayed up late on election night waiting for returns, you may want to take note of this. Apparently a major reason the election was "too close to call", is because the Kerry campaign said so.

The critical moment came at 12:41 a.m. Wednesday, when, shortly after Florida had been painted red for Mr. Bush, Fox News declared that Ohio - and, very likely, the presidency - was in Republican hands.

Howard Wolfson, a strategist, burst into the "boiler room" in Washington where the brain trust was huddled and said, "we have 30 seconds" to stop the other networks from following suit.

The campaign's pollster, Mark Mellman, and the renowned organizer Michael Whouley quickly dialed ABC, CBS, CNN and NBC - and all but the last refrained from calling the race through the night.

Several states like Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Minnesota were called for Kerry with much narrower margins than Ohio. And of course it left NBC and Fox News with the predicament of not calling Nevada until Kerry conceded the election.

Now Bush is being blamed for the suicide of a distressed Kerry supporter for Georgia.

A 25-year-old from Georgia who was distraught over President Bush's re-election apparently killed himself at ground zero.

Andrew Veal's body was found Saturday morning inside the off-limits area of the former World Trade Center site, said Steve Coleman, a spokesman for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

Mary Anne Mauney, Veal's supervisor at the University of Georgia computer lab where he worked, claimed "I'm absolutely sure it's a protest."

First there were sit-ins, then vomit-ins and die-ins. Now they're doing suicide-ins.

After having trouble with CNS News and Media Research, I noticed a few other sites I've been having trouble reaching. It wasn't the computers, so I tried removing the router and hooking the PC directly to the internet. Whaddayaknow, it worked. As it turns out, there was something faulty with the router.

After about an hour of trying to fix the router, I gave up and bought a new Linksys Wireless G (with Speedboost) router. It's humming away fine, and everything seems to be working okay. My only criticism is that Linksys doesn't give you a fully functional DHCP server. It will do DHCP, but the braintrusts at Linksys don't think you would ever need to set up IP reservations. I had an IP reservation set up for my server and my printserver. With the printserver, I simply hardcoded the IP to get it working. But if I assign an IP to the server I also need to configure the DNS, which brings it's own problems with the ISP's DNS servers changing IPs every so often. Basically, I'm disappointed with the Linksys and in hindsight, probably should have bought Netgear instead.

My laptop is in the shop right now, but when it gets back, hopefully the speedboost and 802.11G technology will make it worth while.

Longtime reader MMW is the mastermind behind Westerblog.

Michael Moore fancies himself as an activist for the little guy. He seeks to expose how the working class are constantly being exploited by the bourgeoisie.

Well, two short-filmmakers have taken it upon themselves to follow up with one of the subjects of Roger and Me, to see just how much her life has improved since appearing in one of Mikey's films.

They bring us: MICHAEL & ME.

A police investigator is dusting the door of the Marion Community Credit Union for fingerprints after an armed robbery. OFCC notices the prominent "No Guns" sign on the outside.

(Photo via the Marion Star.)

If you are looking to start your Christmas shopping early, the nice folks at the Violence Policy Center have put together a list of rifles designed just for kids. Their comprehensive chart outlines the make and model of each gun, as well as the caliber, weight, length, and magazine capacity of each.

Unfortunately, they fail to offer prices or links to manufacturers or retailers. (It must have something to do with their non-profit status.)

Kudos to the VPC for finally realizing that gun safety starts when you're young.

(Hat tip to Kim du Toit and Kevin Baker.)

I won't say that all protesting is stupid. But this one sure seems to be.

Whenever you protest, it's nice to have a freakin' issue for crying out loud. You protest for civil rights, gun ownership, or the war. But these numbnuts are protesting hotbed issues such as the national debt and military recruitment.

"We want them to reassure us that our fears are misguided and that the government is doing everything in its power to prevent our futures from being destroyed," said senior Brian Martens.

The students said they were not protesting this week's election, but said they were worried about the huge national debt run up during the first four years of the Bush administration, along with military recruitment in schools and other issues. [...]

Boulder High teacher James Vacca expressed pride in the students for staging the protest.

"In an age where narcissistic college students riot in an inarticulate drunken stupor, you have students here at Boulder High School, principled, thoughtful and yet scared of four more years of pre-emptive war, the Patriot Act and an increase in militarism at school through the No Child Left Behind Act," he said.

Just how does the No Child Left Behind Act increase militarism at school? Just what is militarism at school? Are they handing out rifles now?

And just what is wrong with military recruitment? As I stood in line Tuesday at my polling place in Robert E. Lee (that's right bitch!) High School, they had the typical recruitment posters hanging up. The two that caught my eye were the one for the Texas A&M Corps of Cadets, and the one for the U.S. Marine Corps.

Five bucks says this teacher put them up to it.

When law enforcement agencies began adopting TASER technology, it was meant to be an alternative to using their sidearm. But instead, more and more police are using them as cattle prods to make people toe the line. You need to ask yourself, if someone was hiding in a closet and refused to come out, should an officer be justified in shooting him in the chest? Oh wait, I almost forgot.

Of course this sort of thing is not justified. Why then would it be justified to use a TASER device on him?

The way this story is presented, this guy died because of sheer police laziness.

When they arrived, Guerrero hid in a closet and refused to come out, Pridgen said. Officers shot Guerrero with a Taser stun gun after asking him twice to come out.

Guerrero died from the jolt, after which police tried to claim self defense:

"They had dealt with him before and had a history with him," Pridgen said. "They believed he might have had a weapon."

Nice attempt at a cover up. Why not just sprinkle some crack on him.

First of all, the TASER is not a "stun gun". Calling it a "stun gun" is a clever way to make it's use seem innocuous. I'm not saying that Guerrero was an angel, but "asking him twice" and then ZAP, you're dead, seems a little impatient to me.

I'm just glad my mother didn't have one of those on nights that she served meatloaf. I can see her asking me twice to come to dinner and then ZAP, I'm dead.

Earlier this week, Reuters claimed that oil prices were falling because of a potential Presidential victory for John Kerry. CNN, who had originally claimed that the price drop had a little something to do with increased oil and natural gas inventories, quickly changed their story to follow Reuters lead.

Now, just a few days after Kerry conceded the election and oil prices are still dropping, it's being credited on (surprise), increased oil and natural gas inventories.

U.S. crude oil futures settled below $49 a barrel for the first time since Sept. 27, after a report showed natural gas storage at a record high

CNN, once again follows Reuters lead and reports, "Rising crude and natural gas stockpiles in the United States" are "eroding a price rally that has lifted prices more than 50 percent this year."

I forget. Who was it they were criticizing for stockpiling oil in the strategic reserves?

This healing bullshit has to stop. For the past four years I've heard Bush blamed for everything from the hurricanes to the space shuttle disaster. He's been called a Nazi, a war criminal, accused of racism, and called a crusader. He is constantly ridiculed and criticized as a dummy. And according to Paul Begala, it's even Bush's fault that the nation is supposedly so divided.

President Bush is one of the most talented dividers in American political history. He skillfully used anti-gay bigotry, the Bible, even war to divide Americans so as to conquer Kerry. He should be congratulated on his triumph, but I have no faith in his ability to unite us after this bitter season of division.

I could understand the argument that people who have political differences are at odds with each other right now. But the Dems and the media are simply pointing at the numbers and saying there's 50,000,000 Bush haters out there who are angry and dejected and need a pick-me-up.

I'm sorry, but I just don't buy it. Some people win, some people lose. When you lose you suck it up and try again next time. It's not the end of the World, and I think most people realize that. The only ones who really need a shoulder to cry on are the minority of dems on the angry left.

There is a lot being said about gay marriage. I think some pundits are putting too much stock in the issue. While it may be a single issue for gays, it is most certainly not a single issue for us heterosexuals. Gun rights, abortion, and the environment are single issues for some. But I doubt that anyone outside of the gay community would vote solely out of sexual bigotry.

Personally, I support gay marriage, civil unions, or whatever you want to call it. It doesn't hurt me, or deny anyone of life, liberty, or property so I'm all for it. But this election has proven that that will never happen the way gays want it, and forcing the issue in the courts is only hurting their cause.

If they're smart, they'll push for "civil unions" that give them the same priviledges that married people enjoy. (Lower taxes, subsidized children, legal protection, etc.) If the only difference is the name, who cares? But their 'in your face' campaign has already backfired, and continuing down that road will only make things worse.

Leave it to the New York Times to start the Hillary 2008 Campaign just one day after the 2004 Campaign ended.

Opinion Journal thinks that one of the first orders of business should be to give Miguel Estrada his due. I couldn't agree more. Daschle's character assassination of Mr. Estrada was infuriating, and the best remedy would be to get him into the D.C. Court of Appeals sooner rather than later.

Peggy Noonan says the biggest loser of the 2004 election was the mainstream media: "CBS and the fabricated Bush National Guard documents, the New York Times and bombgate, CBS's "60 Minutes" attempting to coordinate the breaking of bombgate on the Sunday before the election". She also tries to coin the phrase "pajama-clad yeomen" in reference to internet bloggers. Personally, I prefer Pajamahadeen.

Thomas Sowell calls the election "a narrow escape". He also notes that when the mainstream media attacks, it can get pretty ugly: "Dan Rather's forged documents were just the proverbial tip of the iceberg. Ted Koppel's contrived "ambush journalism" against John O'Neill of the Swiftboat Veterans for Truth was more clever, but no less sleazy. Chris Matthews' shouting down and browbeating Michelle Malkin on Hardball was not his finest hour either." He goes on to cover the high/low (depending on who's in office) 5.4% unemployment rate, unsubstantiated claims about keeping people away from the polls, and all that rumor and conjecture about Bush's national guard service in comparison with 10-time Congressional Medal of Honor winner John Kerry.

That's an awful lot of RED.

And USA Today is still filling in some of the pcts.

Another election and the neo-temperance movement marches on. This time the pleasure police have struck a blow to bar owners in Columbus Ohio. You may own the property and may own the business, but tough shit. You must cater to the oppressive majority (and only the oppressive majority) or face criminal penalties.

I've lived in Ohio and trust me, the number of people who smoke there is much greater than in most places. This will have a definite negative impact on local businesses. But too bad for those folks. The majority rules in this country and if that means taking away their livelihood so that non-smokers will have a wider range of restaurants to choose from, so be it. As long as they are stepping all over people's property rights, maybe they should mandate half price drink specials.

Maybe I am being too cynical on this issue. Still, tobacco is much less popular than fatty foods or alcohol, so there is a real chance of it being completely banned. It was long been my contention that a total ban is inevitable and this is yet more evidence of that. Today it's tobacco. Tomorrow maybe it'll be something you enjoy.

Uh oh. Global Warming is here, now. It's right outside your door. And, it's going to kill you!

I had thought we had a few more decades before the end of the world, but apparently it's happening right before our eyes. How could this have snuck up on us? I bet George Bush has something to do with it.

Washington-based Dr. Robert Corell, the lead scientist on the study, says the average winter temperature in the Western Arctic has warmed by an average three degrees in the past 60 years.

"The Arctic climate is warming very dramatically now, we have documented it scientifically with the evidence," he says.

"But what is fascinating for us is that it's doing so so much more rapidly than we had anticipated as recently as four years ago when we started.

So global warming has really picked up in the last... four years. And who was President over those four years? How convenient.

So the North Pole has warmed up 3 degrees over 60 years. Now, I'm no scientist, but who stares at their thermometer for 20 years and when it ticks up just a single degree, thinks it's really getting hot out?

Bush may have won the election, but the close margin must mean that the electorate is bitterly divided. Bush will have to reach out to the left, moderate his tone, and build bipartisan support. Right?

Well, that's what the media wants you to think. Just like they told Clinton after both of his elections when 50-60% of Americans voted against him.

Via Spoons.

Rather than post seperate entries for each thing, I will probably just be adding to this list as I think of more stuff.

1. For all intents and purposes, Bush has won. It doesn't appear possible that Kerry could pull out Ohio without some major fraud. By refusing to concede Kerry is either deluding himself, or he hopes to divide the country and further damage Bush's ability to lead and unite America.

2. Crackhead and former federal prison inmate Marion Barry has been elected to the DC city council. Barry won with a very dictatoresque 96% of the vote.

3. Equally embarrassing, Jim Moran won re-election in my own district. While he wasn't caught on tape smoking crack, he did pick a fight with an 8-year old, threatened or assaulted two different congressmen, and took nearly a half million dollars in questionable "loans" from lobbyists in exchange for legislative support. And of course, he blamed the whole Iraq/War on Terror thing on those dirty Jooos.

4. Fairfax passed all their bond referendums, illustrating to me that other people's money is no object in this county.

5. I want to say thank you to the residents of South Dakota for giving Tommie "Commie" Daschle the boot. The Senate Minority Leader has been one of the worst partisan hacks I've ever seen. Na na na na.. na na na na.. hey... hey... good bye.

6. Had I known Ohio was going to be so important, I would have voted there absentee rather than switching my registration to Virginia when I moved. (j/k) Actually I was still registered there up until I cancelled it a few months ago.

7. After Fox and NBC called Ohio for Bush, I switched over to CBS. Dan Rather seemed down right despondent. Someone should put him on a suicide watch.

8. Bush "won" the popular vote, with more votes than any President in history. Of course this has nothing to do with how we elect presidents, but just imagine what happens if Kerry does manage to steal Ohio and get an electoral majority. Everyone who had been harping over Al Gore's popular vote "win" will suddenly become the bastions of electoral college conservatism.

9. Speaking of the electoral college, kudos to Colorado voters for doing the right thing and defeating their referendum to apportion electoral votes popularly.

10. The mainstream media is making a big deal over the "surprise" that "Moral Values" was a major concern for voters. Voters are equally surprised that moral values isn't a major concern for the mainstream media.

11. Exit polling had Kerry winning in a landslide. Apparently the only thing exit polling is good for is proving that exit polling isn't good for anything.

12. Hilarious tidbit heard on the radio: Yesterday in Ohio, Republican volunteers where busy phoning every voter they could reach to encourage them to vote for Bush. Over the heads of the little old ladies manning the phones was a sign that read, "No phone number left behind".

13. With Denise Majette foolishly running for the Senate rather than defending her seat in the House, Georgia's 4th Congressional District put Cynthia McKinney back into office. Given McKinney's record and looking at where her campaign finances come from, she can pretty much be described as a terrorist sympathizer.

14. Kerry's defeat clears the way for Hillary to run in 2008. Maybe it was her, and not Karl Rove, who got Osama to release his latest terror tape.

15. FOX News called Ohio early. Very early. (Before they called Cali, in fact) The funny thing is that they don't want to stick Ohio back into the "undecided" column, so they are refusing to call Nevada. Nevada has been called for Bush by just about everybody, but at FOX they already have Bush at 269 with Ohio. If they called Nevada that would force their hand to either declare Bush the winner, or remove Ohio. (Neither of which they want to do.)

16. By calling Ohio for Bush early, FOX will cement themselves as the "right wing" network in the minds of liberals. Never mind that MSNBC is in the exact same predicament. Never mind the fact that they will undoubtedly turn out to be correct.

17. Despite (or perhaps because of) Campaign Finance Reform, which was supposed to take the money out of politics, this was the most expensive presidential race in U.S. history.

18. New Yorkers have a short memory. Despite both former mayors Republican Rudy Giuliani and Democrat Ed Koch throwing their support behind President Bush, New York City still broke for Kerry almost 4 to 1. In the five boroughs combined, Kerry got 79.6% of the vote to Bush's 20.3%.

19. John Edwards was supposed to help Kerry in the South. Not only did Edwards lose his home state, he could not even carry his own district.

When I voted, one thing I noticed was that Fairfax had a whopping $412 Million in bond referendums on the ballot. Naturally, they all passed.

Osama bin Laden claimed that only Bush supporters would be targeted by terrorism, while Kerry voters would be spared.

"...any U.S. state that will choose to vote for the white thug Bush as president, it means that it chose to fight us and we will consider it an enemy to us, and any state that will vote against Bush, it means that it chose to make peace with us and we will not characterize it as an enemy..."

Some people aren't afraid.

Why bother coming up with my own content, when I can steal from Kim? Mr. du Toit summarizes the Democrat platform this year.

I'm not going to tell anyone how to vote tomorrow. Suffice it to say that before you punch that hanging chad, please bear in mind what a vote for any Democrat would entail. This is the party whose platform can be summarized as follows:

High Taxes

Gun Control

State ownership of capital

Constitutional reconstructionism (that pesky "living document")

Nanny government and oppressive regulation

A weak, impotent military

Inept foreign policy

Trial lawyers

Liberal Supreme Court judges

Socialism

Gun control

Internationalist subservience to the United Nations

Socialized medical care

Labor unions

Racism (hiring- and college enrolment quotas)

Teachers' unions

Class warfare

Voter fraud

Gun control

Lax immigration controls

Wealth redistributionism

Hostility towards business, and capitalism in general

Over-aggressive environmentalism

Support for failed social programs

Love of the French

Did I mention "gun control" already?

Supporters who include: Hillary Clinton, Ted Kennedy, Tom Daschle, Pat Leahy, Jimmy Carter, Al Sharpton, Jim McDermott, John Kerry, Charles Schumer, Dianne Feinstein, the entire faculty of UC Berkeley, Willie Brown, Barbra Streisand, Dan Rather, A.N.S.W.E.R., Sheila Jackson-Lee, Ed Asner, Alec Baldwin, Barbara Lee, Maxine Waters, Jim McDermott, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Noam Chomsky, etc.

Pajama Journal has caught NBC covering up for Kerry's political gaffe. If you've been paying attention, Kerry supposedly released all of his military records to the public.

Brokaw interview edited to cover up Kerry's records slip!

Brokaw replayed his Kerry interview from the other night. The other night Brokaw said: "Someone has analyzed the President's military aptitude tests and yours, and concluded that he has a higher IQ than you do."

Kerry said: "That's great. More power. I don't know how they've done it, because my record is not public. So I don't know where they are getting that from."

Tonight Kerry said: ""That's great. More power. I don't know how they've done it."

The rest of the sentence is suddenly GONE, nowhere to be heard. Out. Of. Here.

They've also posted the screen shots to back it up.

(via Spoons)

My freshman year of college, I had a poster hanging on the outside of my dorm room. It was a black and white poster of a young topless woman. She was holding a bottle of premium lager and her arms were half crossed to cover up her goodies. The caption read, "Man cannot live on beer alone."

Something tells me that sort of thing wouldn't go over to well in today's hypersensitive politically correct world.

Sophomore Timothy Garneau was accused of violating the school's harassment policy, lewd conduct and defying the affirmative action code for posting a flier outside the elevator reading: "9 out of 10 freshman girls gain 10-15 pounds. But there is something you can do about it. If u live below the 6th floor takes the stairs. Not only will u feel better about yourself but you will also be saving us time and wont be sore on the eyes."

Garneau maintains that the language was a joke and arose out of his and other students' frustration with residents who take the elevator up or down one floor and prolong the wait for people going longer distances.

He has been evicted from the dorm, put on probation until May 2006, will be forced to participate in a sexual harassment program and write a 3,000-word paper on the program, he said.

Where have all the senses of humor gone?

Restraining orders, a/k/a paper protection, have never been very effective. Lets face it, if someone intends to do you harm, they aren't likely to obey a court order to stay away. But once again, the SCOTUS is set to rule on the role of government and their responsibility to protect individuals. (emphasis mine.)

The Supreme Court will decide whether local governments can be sued for failing to enforce restraining orders, using the case of a Colorado mother whose three daughters were killed by their father.

The Supreme Court handled a similar case in 1989, and ruled that public officials may not be sued when their alleged gross negligence permits a child to be abused by a parent. The 6-3 opinion was authored by Rehnquist.

The court said then that the government does not have a constitutional duty to protect people, including abused children, who are not in custody.

The courts have said time and time again that the government has no responsibility to protect you. If you call 9-1-1 and they don't show up; too bad. If you get a restraining order and they don't enforce it; tough luck. Which is why if you are really in danger, you are much better off fending for yourself (getting a gun and learning how to use it) than relying on the powers that be.

If stem cell research is so promising, asks Forbes, why aren't private investors jumping at the opportunity? After all, embryonic stem cell research isn't banned; Bush simply limited federal funding for the unproven science.

But in California, a referendum promises to pick up where the federal government left off:

Besides selecting a president on Tuesday, Californians will be voting on the celebrated Proposition 71, a state initiative to fund stem-cell research that would eventually cost Californians $6 billion--$3 billion in bonds and $3 billion in interest payments for 10 years. If the prop passes, cash-strapped California taxpayers will be spending their money on a handful of second-rate biotech companies that the smart venture capital money housed around San Francisco's famed Bay Area already passed on. To the smart money, these companies had poor prospects and, in many cases, shoddy or highly speculative science.

That's not to say Wall Street's elite investors didn't make their own investments in stem-cell research. But after years of delays, disappointments, and dead ends, most of the venture capital that once flowed into these ventures is slowing down and awaiting better science to come out of institutions and academic research.

Since charity begins at home, those that are willing to tax their neighbors to pay for research should first dip into their own pockets. As a Libertarian, I disapprove of almost all bond referendums; embryonic stem cell or otherwise.

But since I am a betting man, five bucks says it passes.

Happy bidding. I need to sell them to help pay for these.

Re: your credit check post. 
 
You said on http://www.ravnwood.com/archives/001061.shtml: 
"It would seem there are two schools of thought. I share Acidman's view that a good credit rating is an asset. It takes hard work and diligence to make sure that your bills are paid on time, you aren't over extended, and any problems are cleared up quickly and efficiently. I liken it to good grades in school. Whether or not you got an A in freshman English may not really matter a whole lot when you are applying for a job. But if a prospective employer wants to use it as a way to measure your personal habits, so be it. At the very least, it would seem to be a good indication of your personal habits. 
My perception of the opposing school of thought is that they seem to think that credit is something that just happens. People with bad credit are 'victims' of the system, and shouldn't be judged when applying for a job. 
There also seems to be an undertone that being considered for employment is an 'implicit right' that employers are clearly violating. Some readers have even gone so far as to try to liken the use of credit checks to racial bigotry. Dawn Olsen even called the practice 'morally reprehensible'. 
I don't really know what more to say about the issue. Still, you'll find plenty of wonderful comments in the posts on all three sites. 
UPDATE: Jack Cluth has rung in on this as well. I disagree with Jack's opinion. While I could care less if people responsibly use illicit drugs, I feel employers still have a right to test for it. The bottom line is that a person has a choice. They can use drugs, neglect their finances, whatever. But when it comes to applying for a job, they may have to pay the piper for their lack of responsibility." 
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
 
 
 
Okay, Mister Raven "It's my job and I can do credit checks if I want to, hire who I want to, fire who I want to" Wood, since you don't care a whit what happens to anyone out there except your business, then I'll talk to you in your language. Being a former Rush Limbaugh fan of the most rabid kind, I still read, write and speak your dialect quite fluently. 
 
And I don't buy the "I'm not a Republican or Rush fan blah blah blah", what waddles like a duck and quacks like a duck *IS* a duck, and had better NOT come through Chinatown OR by my barbecue grill unescorted. 
 
Point by point. 
 
1) Credit scores are IN NO WAY ANY INDICATOR of the way someone manages their life. If you've been crushed by medical bills or you had to declare bankruptcy because the career you got a COLLEGE DEGREE for, all went overseas (see: COMPUTER ENGINEERING!!), this argument holds about as much water as a collander! Your body gets sick, you get bankrupted by a hospital bill the size of the moon, so you're a bad guy, and no job for you? What planet is that logic valid on, please tell me because I'm sending George Bush and his army of Playstation-trained Iraqi child killers over there to clean house! 
2) Hard working Americans get behind on their bills all the time because of layoffs, cutbacks of pay rates, skyrocketing gas prices, cars breaking down, and other disasters. The fact that people are one paycheck away from disaster is quite true, and the statistics are showing it more and more all the time. The middle class is almost on Al Gore's endangered species list at this point. HARD WORKING people, not your dope smoking hippie losers who skipped class in high school and declined to sign up for the Army and go burn the flesh off middle Eastern school girls for God, country and Halliburton. The argument that only irresponsible people have bad credit is so incomprehensibly stupid, it's amazing the author of this rancid river of literary sewage that I just stumbled upon, ever managed to wander anywhere near a school without GPS or his yellow limousine chauffer. 
3) A person with no loan or credit card history is ALSO an irresponsible person? Ok I'll give ya leeway on this one, since employers might choose to give this person a job. I have far better logical holes to exploit, and not enough time or cheap, big spurry cowboy boots to explore all of 'em. 
4) Credit checks DEPRECATE your credit rating. Do you know how many jobs most people apply to before they get hired? "You're overqualified", anyone? THAT many credit checks will drop your credit rating into the toilet. LOOKING FOR WORK COULD MAKE YOU UN-HIREABLE if this persists! 
5) Da Goddess is absolutely right. Buckle up, Sparky, because you ARE going to pay your dues on this one way or another. You're going to. Bottom line. Ixnay on the credit checks and hire the person based on their nonexistent criminal record and good work experience, OR pay out more in welfare taxes or you'll be hiring security staff and buying ammo to protect your business from the poor. The more desperately poor, the more crime. Them's the stats, that's reality. Butch up and deal, stop living in a Pleasantville state of black and white denial. 
5) YOUR COMPANY IS *****NOT**** YOURS. You might be the one hiring but you have higher masters than you in this world who decide whether or not your company survives. Hint. They ain't the Evil Communist Gub'mint. 
 
Oh my. 
Did I just say that?  
 
Now that you've just picked yourself up off the floor, here's reality again. Your business and its survival depends on the ability of your **CUSTOMERS** to buy your product.  
 
More employers than ever are now demanding credit checks as a condition of employment. 
Credit checks deprecate the credit rating of every person that has one done on them. 
Hard working people who are nailed by circumstance will be locked out of employment. 
 
Unemployed people are less likely to buy your stuff. Or your client's stuff. It's a food chain thang, you might not get it. 
 
Here's you future. 
People can't pay bills, or they can't get a job because of the credit rating you ruined by doing all these vanity checks, and thus they cut their spending. You chalk it up to irresponsibility. 
 
Others decide to (American Nat'l anthem)"ACT RESPONSIBLY"(/American Nat'l anthem) and cut their spending for fear of being rushed by bills, unemployment, etc. whatever. You don't even notice this is happening yet. Ignorance is bliss and all that. 
 
Meanwhile, consumer spending in general, goes down. Your clients' clients' clients start to lose profits, and then they go out of business. You light up a cigar - 
 
ok, you're a responsible man, so no cigar for you - 
 
You take a swig of Aquafina bottled water and say those stupid businesses were irresponsible, to heck with 'em. 
 
Then after a while your clients' clients go out of business. Then the caca rolls up to your clients. Same song, no compassion for those dorks. Then suddenly you're out of clients and - 
 
Woah, now how did that happen? - 
 
now it's your turn to close your doors! 
 
Finally, one day, you yourself will find your life savings gone and your own bank account overdrawn as you try and pay that $500 health insurance bill. 
 
Then you will decide to go out and get a job. Lo and behold, Raven "Mister Responsibility" Wood gets turned down because of 
*gasp* 
a bad credit rating. 
 
Whammo, you'll suddenly remember what your mother told you: 
What goes around comes around. 
 
Oh I'm sorry, rewind that, your mother was also a die hard Republican, it was probably her priest who said: 
"Judge not, lest ye be judged." 
 
The end. 
 
 
 
 
Not that I expect a response. I've heard all the arguments of the "forget God, in money we trust" crowd and you'll just post a whole lot of dodges, denials and boring whatever. 
What I predicted will happen. Have a nice day at the golf course, it won't last forever. 
 
Signed, 
A near-800 credit rating, well to do Tech guy with a house of his own and an impending marriage Dec 11th.

Just a few days ago, I suggested that since Bush was getting blamed for climbing oil prices, he should get credit for them having fallen back down. Today Reuters is assigning credit, but you'll never guess to whom:

Oil prices fell sharply on Monday on speculation that a U.S. election win for Senator John Kerry could ease the geopolitical friction that has helped fuel this year's record-breaking rally.

It only makes sense. Since the high price of oil is all Bush's fault, it only stands to reason that when the price falls, Kerry gets all the credit.

For the record, CNN/Money tells a different story:

Oil prices fell below $50 a barrel early Monday, as concern about a heating-fuel crunch was alleviated over the weekend and traders realized that the market may be overbought.

The CNN article went on to say that the market got a little saturated and that oil output is climbing as refineries that had been closed are coming back online.

Refineries in Florida and along the Gulf Coast that were closed because of the hurricanes, as well as more favorable conditions in oil production in Iraq are starting to incr... BUT HOLD EVERYTHING. Even as I'm writing this, CNN altered their article and took their lead from the Bush-bashers at Reuters.

They have now deleted all of their insightful analysis and chalked it up to 'Investors are giddy for Kerry'. Next time they say something that might help Bush, I'd better get a screen shot.

UPDATE: Their story was similar to Bloomberg's. [screenshot]

What if Ray Harryhausen was gay?

From reader, Dave J. from down under.

Geek With A .45 points out that Walter Cronkite went a little moonbatty on CNN's Larry King Live.

When asked about the election-eve release of the bin Laden tape, Cronkite blamed the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy.

So now the question is basically right now, how will this affect the election? And I have a feeling that it could tilt the election a bit. In fact, I'm a little inclined to think that Karl Rove, the political manager at the White House, who is a very clever man, he probably set up bin Laden to this thing.

It had been thought that Bush was keeping OBL captive in order to stage his capture right before the election. Apparently though, Bush has been keeping him to do terrorist video tapes to increase his poll numbers.

But Criminals Prefer Maryland

After having been stuck at #21 for the past two quarters, Ravenwood's Universe has moved up to #17 in John Hawkins' Top 40. It's an honor just to be mentioned.

Recently, Fairfax Board of Supervisors Chairman Gerry Connolly was involved in a hit and run. Connolly smashed up a Ford Explorer and sped away from the scene, but being a prominent elected official has it's privileges. There was no doubt that Connolly, a Fairfax Democrat, would get a pass. But the controversial ruling leaves serious doubt whether Connolly should even have a driver's license.

[Judge Craig] Johnston, in issuing his not guilty ruling, said Connolly's "position and his duties have caused him to be oblivious to what is going on in his car."

That's comforting.

UPDATE: For those of you who are interested, Connolly is a Democrat; not that there's anything wrong with that. (Happy Jack?) ;)

CNS News wants to know if someone got to Curt Schilling.

In a statement posted on a Red Sox blog Friday, Schilling said he was not "medically cleared" to travel with President Bush "until I see Doc on Sunday."

"Second," Schilling continued, "while I am a Bush supporter, and I did vote for him with an absentee ballot, speaking as I did the other day (on "Good Morning America") was wrong.

"While I hope to see (President Bush) reelected, it's not my place, nor the time for me to offer up my political opinions unsolicited," his statement said.

Normally I would hope that all entertainers would stick to entertaining us and leave politics out of it. (Save for people like Leno or Letterman who make their living off of political fodder.) But with the celebrity world tour out there stumping for Kerry, it would be nice to have a few high profile celebs on our side.