February 2010 Archives

Updated for a friend's request:  Gracie and I attended the Robert Burns Dinner last night in Houston.  It is the 5th largest event of its kind in the world, and great time of tippling single malts, celebrating the Haggis and baudy poetry in honor of the Bard.The world famous St. Thomas Pipe Band performed for the kilted crowd.  Here's a little sample I shot with my iPhone: Ellisland, near Dumfries, 18th May, 1789 Fair the...

This appeared on CNN's Crossfire in 2004. Not much seems to have changed. We're still grossly partisan as a nation (or at least the politicians are), and the media are still hacks."I'm not your monkey" ... Jon Stewart, I love you.As you know, CNN cancelled Crossfire in January of 2005 -- more info in an interesting follow-up piece here: http://arstechnica.com/old/content/2005/01/4509.ars" ... most major media outlets, have a long way to go before the thinking public truly respects...

A couple of items of interest from Afghanistan. 1) President Karzai's latest power grab: "...a presidential decree to take total control of the country's electoral watchdog commission. Yes, that is the same commission that exposed widespread fraud in the 2009 vote...The Electoral Complaints Commission adjudicates violations and will play an important role in the September vote for a new Parliament. By law, it has five members: three non-Afghans appointed by the United Nations and two...

I realize I often times come off as sounding uncaring. Maybe it is a bit of the old-school in terms of education coming out. You can't help but listen to dinner conversation about work growing up without being affected. So, sometimes I come off as callous and maybe even a bit conservative. It's funny, I catch it from both ends. That's life in the middle I guess. However, today I wanted to talk about something...

Republican Virginia State Delegate Bob Marshall claims that disabled children are God's punishment on women who aborted their first pregnancy.   Yeah, he really did. "The number of children who are born subsequent to a first abortion with handicaps has increased dramatically," he said. "Why? Because when you abort the first born of any, nature takes its vengeance on the subsequent children." "In the Old Testament, the first born of every being, animal and man, was...

In the latest news from the war in Vietnam Afghanistan, General Westmoreland's McChrystal's strategy of "winning the hearts and minds" of the Vietnamese Afghani people took a hit over the weekend as another 33 civilians, including women and children, were blown away by an "errant airstrike". General Westmoreland McChrystal immediately issued an apology to President Nguyen Van Thieu Hamid Karzai."One day after Afghan President Hamid Karzai made an impassioned plea for American-led forces to do...

Guest-blogged by Gracie Cavnar.  Original piece appeared on the Houston Chronicle opinion page today, February 21, 2010:First lady Michelle Obama recently announced her sweeping national initiative to combat childhood obesity. For the first time since this epidemic emerged, a comprehensive federal effort will coordinate with nonprofit organizations and the private sector to address the broad spectrum of contributing factors to obesity that together threaten generations of Americans with chronic disease and early death. It's not...

Sen, Jim DeMint, this past Thursday at CPAC (which he read from a teleprompter):"Now let's talk a minute about the Presidential race in 2012. I hope Americans will expect more from their next president than a great speech. You can't govern from a teleprompter."  Apparently Mitt Romney didn't get that memo:Neither did Dick Armey:  Or Liz Cheney:Or Papa Cheney the war criminal:Really, Dick. How difficult is it to remember, "I love me some waterboarding."...

Title 18, U.S. Code 2340 defines torture as "an act committed by a person acting under the color of law specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering...upon another person within his custody or physical control;"USC 2340A defines the penalties:"Whoever outside the United States commits or attempts to commit torture shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both, and if death results to any person...

Just as the right scrambles to blame yesterday's plane crash into a building in Austin, TX as a left wing nutjob, about 600 people as of the time of this publication have joined a group called "the Philosophy of Joe Stack" on Facebook. The discussions on the page paint Stack as some kind of "hero" for committing an act of terrorism that " is no different than what was going on in this same land...