Dr. Death

Jack Kevorkian, the assisted-suicide advocate who served eight years in prison for second-degree murder, announced Monday he's running for Congress as an independent.

If elected, he said his main priority will be promoting the little-known Ninth Amendment, which protects rights not explicitly specified elsewhere in the U.S. Constitution. Kevorkian said he interprets it as protecting a person's choice to die through assisted suicide or to avoid wearing a seat belt.

- AP/Miami Herald (link here)

Clinton gutter politics

Bill Richardson came out swinging Easter Sunday, slamming the "gutter" politics which he says is "typical of many of the people around Senator Clinton."

- NewsMax (link here)

Gutter politics have always been the Clinton norm.

Richardson should have known that if you cross the Clintons, you will be subjected to the politics of personal destruction.

He can be outraged, but he cannot be surprised.

Messes

Thanks to Mark for this one.

Cartoons

Osama bin Laden warned in a new audiotape of a "severe" reaction for Europeans' publication of cartoons of Islam's Prophet Muhammad in what experts saw as a direct threat of a new attack in Europe.

- AP/Star Tribune (link here)

The guy obviously has no sense of humor.

Humorous toilet paper

www.prankplace.com

Protohumans

As early as six million years ago, apparently close to the beginning of the human lineage, an ancestral species had already developed the transforming ability for upright walking, scientists reported on Thursday.

- NY Times (link here)

Rays kill again

A 55-year-old woman from Michigan died Thursday in a freak accident in which she was struck by a 75-pound spotted eagle ray that jumped out of the Atlantic Ocean just off the shore of Key Colony Beach near Marathon, said Bobby Dube, spokesperson for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.

- Miami Herald (link here)

NObama

http://www.badgrafix.com/cgi-bin/store/bgStore.pl/1155987206/badgrafix/4541457

Orlando airport

At least two dozen rodents died in hidden nooks and crannies of a gate area at Orlando International Airport, creating a stench so foul it forced authorities to shut down a customs checkpoint last weekend and divert arriving international passengers to the opposite side of the airport, authorities said.

- Orlando Sentinel/azcentral (link here)

Hell Kitten AR-15

www.riflegear.com

God works in mysterious ways

The young Muslim assailants grabbed rabbi Ohana's yarmulke (skullcap), and when he went to them to get it back, they beat him and shouted, "Allahu Akbar." One of the Muslim attackers ran away into the street and was hit by a car (G-d works in mysterious ways). He was arrested by police. But three to four other Muslim assailants--whom you can bet will attack other Jews--escaped and are free.

- Debbie Schlussel (link here)

Russian SU-30

Thanks to Brian for calling my attention to this.

http://bobandsylvia.com/FIGHTER.htm

Very impressive video of the new Russian jet fighter.

Cheesy ethics

With the Clintons, we expect them to be cheesy on ethics, so no one is ever surprised when they are.

- Maureen Dowd, NY Times (link here)

Yet another excellent quote.

Drink beer

"... a decade's worth of health research shows that regular, moderate beer intake--one to two 12 ounce glasses per day for men and one for women--can be good for you, especially if you're facing some of the most common diseases related to aging."

- Allison Van Dusen, Forbes.com (link here)

Biblical duty

In a major shift, a group of Southern Baptist leaders said their denomination has been "too timid" on environmental issues and has a biblical duty to stop global warming.

- AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal (link here)

The Price of Victory

If -- and it's still an if -- the numbers just don't add up for U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton to be the Democratic presidential nominee, but the party, through its arcane rules and superdelegates process, gives it to her anyway, Democrats will pay dearly, for a generation or more.

- Ron Dzwonkowski, Free Press Columnist (link here)

The Clintons would gladly pay this or any other price.

The Goracle

Former Vice President and global warming crusader Al Gore stands to make close to $50 million when the TV channel he co-founded goes public with an Initial Public Offering.

But it currently is available in only about 19 million U.S. homes, and has lost $31.5 million over the last three years, Ron Grover discloses in BusinessWeek.

“Something about this deal just doesn’t sit right with me,” Grover observes.

“What really sticks out to me,” Grover writes, is that Gore and Hyatt, “who jumpstarted the company with a broken-down Newsworld International channel they bought for $70.9 million, will have the kind of hammer-lock control over the company decried by shareholder rights activists and many of the same unions that supported Gore for years.”

- NewsMax (no link provided, will continue to look for one)

Of course. The classic Gore double standard. One set of rules for himself, and a completely different set of rules for everyone else.

Minnesota road rage, or lack thereof

Woman's road rage story takes a U-turn

The Prior Lake woman admits she wasn't thrown onto Hwy. 169 by the man in the road rage incident last week, nor did he smash her cell phone.

- StarTribune (link here)

Maybe she could get a job as a stripper somewhere near Duke University.

Athol

A cable sports network says it no longer will make Athol the butt of its jokes.

Comcast SportsNet said Thursday it would pull a newspaper ad that leaders of the small central Massachusetts town called insulting and offensive.

Selectman Susannah Whipps was the lone selectmen of the five to vote against sending the letter to the network. She told the Telegram and Gazette newspaper of Worcester that she was not offended by the ad, and predicted the publicity would help Comcast.

She was more concerned, she said, about vandals who add an "r" and an "e" to town signs to change the name to "rathole."

- AP/azcentral (link here)

The problems of small-town life.

Buy European?

The Air Force’s selection of a European supplier over Boeing for its next generation of tanker aircraft has sparked a frenzy of predictable bipartisan complaints: How could the military outsource these patriotic jobs?

For Congress to reverse the decision on “Buy America” grounds would be bad for taxpayers: requiring them to pay for aircraft that provide less value for the money. It would also be bad diplomacy and bad business. And that can’t be good for the country.

- NY Times editorial (link here)

Rush helps Hillary

Republican crossover voters apparently helped win the Democratic primary in Texas for Hillary Clinton with one in every 10 Democratic votes came from Republicans.

And they could have been heeding the call of top-rated radio host Rush Limbaugh, who had been urging Republican listeners to vote for Hillary to prevent the Democrats from unifying around Obama and to keep the two candidates battling each other.

- NewsMax (link here)

ICE & tax dollars

Readers of this site will remember my multiple columns and postings on John Torres, ICE's own version of "Seinfeld"'s George Costanze (with apologies to Costanza). He's the guy who wasted $50,000 in your tax money--meant for rounding up, jailing, and deporting illegal aliens--to pay baseball's Tommy Lasorda to speak at a weeklong party Torres hosted. The party--whose purpose was solely to promote Torres (and hey, it worked!)--cost taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars in salaries of ICE personnel, travel costs, food, and hotel bills. You paid for that, too, even though you and your Congressmen and Senators allocated the money for illegal alien deportation, NOT John Torres' partying.

- Debbie Schlussel (link here)

She continues to land a lot of good punches.

Aiding terrorists

Over the weekend, both Detroit papers (the Free Press and the Newsistan) gushed that Detroit will soon have an emergency passport office. The federal government calls it a "Gateway" passport office. I call it a GETAWAY passport office. (At least they have the letters right.) The only thing Detroit is a "Gateway" city for is Hezbollah. And that's why this new office is nothing to cheer about.

The feds say that the Detroit Getaway Passport office will employ 40-60 employees. That's a lot of employees for, apparently, a heckuva a lot of quickie-Hezbo and HAMAS passports.

- Debbie Schlussel (link here)

Pathetic.

Harpy for President

We're surging, Hillary! If you want to be even more likable, you should go on "The View." Next to those four harpies, you seem almost agreeable.

- Ann Coulter (link here)

Literally dozens of excellent quotes in this column.

Al Franken

The state of New York fined the personal corporation of Democratic Senate candidate Al Franken $25,000 for not carrying workers' compensation insurance for almost three years.

- jsonline/wire reports (link here)

Franken wants to tell the rest of us how to live our lives, but cannot keep his own house in order. Typical liberal double standard.

Microsoft thinking green

Microsoft cited a study by the U.K.'s PC Pro Labs, which found that for a company with 200 PCs, running Windows Vista on the machines produced 45 tons less of carbon per year than running XP.

- zdnet.com (link here)

More pandering from Microsoft.

Do-over in Michigan and Florida?

Officials in Michigan and Florida are showing renewed interest in holding repeat presidential nominating contests so that their votes will count in the epic Democratic campaign.

The governors of both states, along with top officials in Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign, are now saying they would consider holding a sort of do-over contest by June. That's a change from their previous insistence that the primaries their states held in January should determine how the states' delegates are allocated.

- AP/columbiatribune (link here)

Suing Al Gore

(thanks to Caroline for calling my attention to this one)

John Coleman wants to sue Al Gore for fraud. Coleman, who founded the Weather Channel in 1982, thinks taking legal action against Al Gore would be a great "vehicle to finally put some light on the fraud of global warming." Coleman rejects the notion that people must take drastic actions to reduce their energy use.

- citizensugar (link here)

Excellent idea.

American Congress for Truth

War has been declared on Christians, Jews, non-Muslims and secularists worldwide by Islamic extremists...simply because we are infidels according to their belief. As Islamic fundamentalism spreads its tentacles worldwide, it is crucial for the people of the Western world to understand the danger, know what to expect, and know what to do about it.

Threats and realities of forced conversions to Islam, beheadings, torture and murder are quickly becoming commonplace. They’re rarely mentioned in the news and when they are, it’s with a disclaimer…the word “insurgent” has replaced the truth of “terrorists.”

Political correctness is killing us.

- Brigitte Gabriel, American Congress for Truth (link here)

Huckabee in the future

He walked away with a big consolation prize: Huckabee is considered by many to be the face of a new, nicer Republicanism.

"His good-natured approach to politics - `I'm a conservative; I'm just not mad about it,' as he likes to say - is quite appealing after years of scorched-earth tactics from both parties," The Dallas Morning News, which endorsed him, wrote in an editorial on Monday.

"True, a Huckabee vote today won't do much to determine the 2008 GOP presidential candidate. But it's a good investment in the Republican Party's future."

- AP/Forbes (link here)

Redneck Girls

(Thanks to Dad for this one)

Drinking with a Redneck Girl

A Mexican, an Arab, and a redneck girl are in the same bar.

When the Mexican finishes his beer, he throws his glass in the air, pulls out his pistol, and shoots the glass to pieces. He says, "In Mexico, our glasses are so cheap we don't need to drink with the same one twice."

The Arab, obviously impressed by this, drinks his beer, throws it into the air, pulls out his AK-47, and shoots the glass to pieces. He says, "In the Arab World, we have so much sand to make glasses that we don't need to drink with the same one twice either."

The redneck girl, cool as a cucumber, picks up her beer, downs it in one gulp, throws the glass into the air, whips out her 45, and shoots the Mexican and the Arab.
Catching her glass, setting it on the bar, and calling for a refill, she says, "In America we have so many illegal Mexicans and Arabs that we don't have to drink with the same ones twice."

Guns on campus

Ms. Johnson, a Republican from Mesa [Arizona], said she believed that the recent carnage at Northern Illinois University could have been prevented or limited if an armed student or professor had intercepted the gunman. The police, she said, respond too slowly to such incidents and, besides, who better than the people staring down the barrel to take action?

- NY Times (link here)

I agree with Ms. Johnson.

Except for Monica

Watching Bill Clinton greet but not address — the Big Dog has been muzzled — an excited group of students at Texas State University in San Marcos on Tuesday, 19-year-old Allison Krolczyk said she was leaning toward Obama and felt no gender guilt about voting for him. “Not at all,” she said. “I think they’re both pretty amazing.”

The crowd held up their camera phones to capture the former president, in his bright orange tie and orange-brown ostrich cowboy boots.

“We love you, Bill!” yelled one boy. “You did a good job, except for Monica.”

Maureen Dowd, NY Times (link here)

Great quote.

Dearbornistan

For the last two years, representatives from Walmart's corporate headquarters met with and pandered to the most extremist, Islamofascist leaders in Dearborn's Islamic community, including FBI award revokee and "former" Islamic terrorist Imad Hamad, so that they could plan the new so-called "Arab American" Walmart in Dearbornistan. But there's nothing "Arabic" about it. Walmart didn't meet with Chaldeans (Catholic Iraqis) or Maronite Christians from Lebanon or even the Druze community. They met only with Muslims.

And, to make matters worse, Walmart hired Suehaila Amen, an openly anti-Semitic, anti-Israel, pro-Hezbollah Shi'ite Muslim to give ethnic sensitivity training to Walmart employees.

Disgusting. I WILL NEVER SHOP AT WALMART AGAIN! And neither should you.

- Debbie Schlussel (link here)

Throwing a lot of good punches as usual.

Spotted hyenas

For the past two decades, Kay E. Holekamp has been chronicling the lives of spotted hyenas on the savannas of southern Kenya. She has watched cubs emerge from their dens and take their place in the hyena hierarchy; she has seen alliances form and collapse. She has observed clan wars, in which dozens of hyenas have joined together to defend their hunting grounds against invaders.

“It’s like following a soap opera,” said Dr. Holekamp, a professor at Michigan State University.

- NY Times (link here)

Fascinating research.

Not liberal enough?

The liberal watchdog group Media Matters for America has gone on the attack against longtime "Meet the Press" host Tim Russert, saying he has "regularly smeared" Democrats on a variety of issues.

- NewsMax (link here)

Pathetic.

The far-left is not as far-left as it could be?

Muhammad Cartoon Gallery

http://www.humanevents.com/

Very entertaining.

Catholics

Endorsed by an influential Texas televangelist, Republican John McCain endeared himself to one group of voters but risked alienating another with the pastor's anti-Catholic views.

The televangelist, San Antonio megachurch leader John Hagee, has referred to the Roman Catholic Church as "the great whore" and called it a "false cult system" and "the apostate church"; the word "apostate" means someone who has forsaken his religion.

- AP/Forbes (link here)

Nigerian dog scam

English bulldogs, especially those from "champion bloodlines" and recognized by the American Kennel Club, are worth a pretty penny: upwards of $3,000 for some puppies.

So when 29-year-old Justin Gariott saw a classified ad in the Feb. 23 edition of the Review-Journal purporting to offer them free for adoption, he jumped at the chance.

What Gariott had stumbled upon was one of the latest schemes out of Nigeria to defraud Americans. The "puppy scam," as it's known, has become so notorious it prompted a joint press release by the AKC and the Better Business Bureau last year to warn consumers about it.

- Las Vegas Review-Journal (link here)

I would rather have a beagle.

Arborglyphs

Etched into the bark of aging aspens across Colorado, thousands of notes from lonely shepherds from afar linger on a fading canvas. They are lonely narratives carved carefully and passionately a century ago by Mexican, Peruvian and Basque sheepherders, delivering a blunt glimpse into their hard lives.

Known as arborglyphs or dendroglyphs, the impressions divulge the raw isolation of men far from the warmth of family and home.

- Denver Post (link here)

The liberal Republican

As goofs go, John McCain's slip at a town hall forum Friday was a small one. Contrasting himself with his likely Democratic opponent, he said, "I'm a proud, conservative, liberal Repub —" And then he caught himself, as the audience started laughing.

- Washington Post/Denver Post (link here)

Global warming

The world has seen some extraordinary winter conditions in both hemispheres over the past year: snow in Johannesburg last June and in Baghdad in January, Arctic sea ice returning with a vengeance after a record retreat last summer, paralyzing blizzards in China, and a sharp drop in the globe’s average temperature.

- Andrew Revkin, NY Times (link here)

Bias

Walter Shorenstein, a prominent San Francisco-based real estate developer, Democratic fundraiser and longtime supporter of Hillary Rodham Clinton, penned a memo to Democratic party "superdelegates" and other activists criticizing media coverage of the presidential campaign.

- AP/Forbes (link here)

Translation = His candidate is not doing well, and he needs to find a scapegoat.

Evolution

Why Darwin Matters: The Case Against Intelligent Design (2006)

by Michael Shermer

The author is a former creationist.

Just as some ex-smokers become rabid anti-smokers, the author had become quite the anti-creationist.

The author points out that intelligent design is just creationism in another guise.

Raises an interesting question: who designed the designer?

A good overview in less than 200 pages.

Pandering

The Democratic candidates understand that trade with the developing world has both costs and benefits, which are not evenly distributed across the United States. Two days before this week's debate, Mr. Obama said, "I don't think it's realistic for us to repeal NAFTA," because that "would actually result in more job loss . . . than job gains." Ms. Clinton awkwardly pleaded that NAFTA has benefited some parts of the country -- such as Texas. Yet the urge to win Ohio trumped, and both Democrats made a threat that, if taken seriously, can be described only as reckless. In other words, we have to hope that they were only pandering.

- Washington Post (link here)

Pandering was always been a core tactic of Democrats.