Franken

For the moment ahead, just barely:

By the end of the day, according to the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Franken had a 251-vote lead — out of 2.9 million cast in the election. Coleman's lead had once stood at 725 votes.

Still Militarized

The Guard is staying in New Orleans a while longer:

About 100 National Guard troops will continue patrolling New Orleans, where they have been a constant presence since a rash of violence broke out in June 2006 in the city ravaged by Hurricane Katrina.

Louisiana lawmakers on Friday approved funding to keep the troops in place through February, an extension sought by police Superintendent Warren Riley to allow his department more time to recruit more officers. The city has granted repeated extensions for the same reason.

Backwards

Why must my country be so embarrassing?

The United States Thursday became the lone major western nation to refuse to sign a United Nations statement affirming that human rights protections include sexual orientation and gender identity.

Controlling History

Simply appalling:

I am the law.

That's the message Vice President Dick Cheney appeared to send in a little-noticed court filing last week, in which his lawyers asserted that the vice president alone has the authority to determine which records are turned over to the National Archives after he leaves office. But the law exempts "personal and partisan" records, which Cheney's lawyers said he will be the sole decider upon.

"The vice president alone may determine what constitutes vice presidential records or personal records, how his records will be created, maintained, managed and disposed, and are all actions that are committed to his discretion by law," according to a filing by Cheney's office with the court hearing the case Dec. 8, noted by the AP's Pamela Hess.

Liar

Surprise:

Former White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales misled Congress when he claimed the CIA in 2002 approved information that ended up in the 2003 State of the Union speech about Iraq's alleged effort to buy uranium for its nuclear weapons program, a House Democrat said Thursday.

Milestone!

234,000 hits as of right now.

I'm sure that is somehow significant.

The Hole

Education. You're doing it wrong:

A few weeks before 13-year-old Jonathan King killed himself, he told his parents that his teachers had put him in "time-out."

"We thought that meant go sit in the corner and be quiet for a few minutes," Tina King said, tears washing her face as she remembered the child she called "our baby ... a good kid."

But time-out in the boy's north Georgia special education school was spent in something akin to a prison cell -- a concrete room latched from the outside, its tiny window obscured by a piece of paper.

Called a seclusion room, it's where in November 2004, Jonathan hanged himself with a cord a teacher gave him to hold up his pants.

Classy

Thank god our next VP isn't from this state:

Alaska officials are investigating racist jokes about President-elect Barack Obama that have been circulating on state government e-mail accounts.

One of the five e-mails obtained by The Associated Press asks about the outcome of the Democrat's victory after all the time and money invested and concludes: "Another black family living in government housing!"

Do Not

give us your tired, etc.:

Federal judges in some parts of the United States are delaying the swearing-in of new citizens, apparently so that courts can keep millions of dollars in naturalization fees paid by immigrants, according to a new government report and immigration analysts.

In one of the nation's busiest courts, a judge's delay caused nearly 2,000 people to not receive the oath in time to register for November's general election, according to the ombudsman for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, Michael Dougherty, in a 13-page report posted on his office's internet site yesterday.

The conclusion adds a new twist to longstanding complaints that applicants for citizenship face long waits, poor service and different treatment from U.S. immigration authorities depending on which office handles their application.

Bloody Hell

Rick Warren? Really?

The congressional committee handling the arrangements for President-elect Barack Obama's inauguration has released the program for the event which will include famous entertainers like Aretha Franklin, Yo-Yo Ma and Itzhak Perlman and a couple of well-known preachers, Rick Warren of Saddleback Church and Joseph Lowery, former head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

Stalin Redux

Everything old is new again in Russia:

Russian LGBT rights groups are concerned they could be arrested under a proposed treason law likely to gain easy passage in Parliament.

The new law drafted by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s Cabinet would allow authorities to label any government critic a traitor - a move that leading human rights activists condemned Wednesday as a chilling reminder of the times under Soviet dictator Josef Stalin.

The draft extends the definition of treason from breaching Russia’s external security to damaging the nation’s constitutional order, sovereignty or territorial integrity. That would essentially let authorities interpret any act against the interests of the state as treason - a crime prosecutable by up to 20 years in prison.

Prominent rights activists said passage of the bill would catapult Russia’s justice system back to the times of Stalin’s purges.

Those Who Don't Know History

Yeah, this plan has worked out so well in the past:

KANDAHAR, AFGHANISTAN—The U.S. military will soon launch a pilot program to raise local militias, paid by the Pentagon, in an effort to improve security throughout the country.

Osama II, anyone?

One More Reason...

to hate insurance companies:

An insurance company with a potential $25 million liability from a 2007 Houston office fire is claiming smoke that killed three people was "pollution" and surviving families shouldn't be compensated for their losses since the deaths were not caused directly by the actual flames.

Great American Insurance Company is arguing in a Houston federal court that the section of the insurance policy that excludes payments for pollution — like discharges or seepage that require cleanup — would also exclude payouts for damages, including deaths, caused by smoke, or pollution, that results from a fire.

God Bless America

Loafers of Mass Destruction

It's all about the shoes these days:

Thousands of Iraqis on Monday demanded the release of Muntazer al-Zaydi, the journalist who threw his shoes at US President George W. Bush. The protests took place in the Shia Baghdad neighbourhood of Sadr City and the demonstrators marched towards the headquarters of the Iraqi press syndicate, in al-Waziriya, said Iraqi news agency Voices of Iraq.
...
In a separate incident in the Iraqi city of Najaf, protesters threw their shoes at an American patrol as it passed by.

Persecution

Yeah, "that's sad," all right:

Adolf Hitler Campbell -- it's indeed the name on his birth certificate -- turns 3 today, and the Campbell family believes the boy has been mistreated. A local supermarket refused to make a birthday cake with "Adolf Hitler" on it.

The ShopRite in Greenwich Township has also refused to make a cake bearing the name of Campbell's daughter, JoyceLynn Aryan Nation Campbell, who turns 2 in February.

Honszlynn Hinler Jeannie Campbell, a girl named for Schutzstaffel head Heinrich Himmler, turns 1 in April.

"ShopRite can't even make a cake for a 3-year-old," said Deborah Campbell, 25, who is Heath's wife of three years and the mother of the children. "That's sad."

On the Job Training

Our insane wars are helping to train and equip some insane people:

Two years ago, the Intelligence Report revealed that alarming numbers of neo-Nazi skinheads and other white supremacist extremists were taking advantage of lowered armed services recruiting standards and lax enforcement of anti-extremist military regulations by infiltrating the U.S. armed forces in order to receive combat training and gain access to weapons and explosives.

These chickens will come home to roost.

So Very Tired

Why on earth does this ignorance live on?

The only thing that -- the only thing that gay marriage produce -- well, gay marriage doesn't produce anything that the state has an interest in. Gay sex produces AIDS, which the state doesn't have -- or should have an interest in. They should charge homosexuals more for their -- for their health insurance than they charge the rest of us.

Sheer idiocy from The War Room.

'Tis the Season

Merry Christmas:

A man has been charged with first-degree murder after a shooting at an office Christmas party in Vancouver Friday.

Police allege Eric Allen Kirkpatrick, 61, opened fire at the TallGrass Distribution Ltd Christmas party, killing Benjamin David Banky, 40.

...

At least a dozen employees had been celebrating when the gunman, who had been recently laid off, entered the party and began firing a gun, according to Vancouver Police spokesperson Const. Tim Fanning.

Signs of the Endtimes

Sigh:

Versace, the renowned fashion house, is to create the world’s first refrigerated beach so that hotel guests can walk comfortably across the sand on scorching days.

The beach will be next to the the new Palazzo Versace hotel which is being built in Dubai where summer temperatures average 40C and can reach 50C.

The beach will have a network of pipes beneath the sand containing a coolant that will absorb heat from the surface.

The swimming pool will be refrigerated and there are also proposals to install giant blowers to waft a gentle breeze over the beach.

All Your Homes Are Belong to Us

Not pretty:

American homeowners will collectively lose more than $2 trillion in home value by the end of 2008, according to a report released Monday.

The real estate Web site Zillow.com calculated that home values have dropped 8.4% year-over-year during the first three quarters of 2008, compared with the same period of 2007.

Some 11.7 million Americans are now "underwater," owing more on their mortgage balances than their homes are worth.