In a vivid display of President Obama’s diminished clout, the Senate’s newest Republican and two veteran Democrats Tuesday helped block Mr. Obama’s bid to fill a key labor post with a nominee they considered too cozy with unions.
With newly seated Sen. Scott Brown, Massachusetts Republican, voting to sustain the filibuster, Senate Democratic leaders failed to muster the 60 votes needed to force a vote on the nomination of Craig Becker to the National Labor Relations Board, which resolves disputes between unions and management.
Tebow Ad The national director for Generation Life says it comes as no surprise that liberal groups are upset over a Super Bowl ad featuring Tim Tebow and his mother.Focus on the Family produced the 30-second spot, which is slated to run during the CBS broadcast on Sunday and reportedly will feature Pam Tebow recounting her decision to carry Tim to full-term, despite a doctor’s advice to have an abortion due to health concerns. Liberal and feminist groups were quick to denounce the ad, even though it has yet to be previewed, and Brandi Swindell, founder and national director of Generation Life, contends the heated opposition shows the liberal groups’ true colors.
Moon No Go
(CNN) — American astronauts will not return to the moon as planned if Congress passes President Obama’s proposed budget.
Obama’s budget — which aims to tighten the nation’s purse strings in certain areas while increasing money used to create jobs — would cancel NASA’s Constellation Program, which had sought to send astronauts back to the moon by 2020.
Constellation also intended to study the idea of establishing a moon colony. The program was set to follow the U.S. space agency’s shuttle missions, which are due to end in September.
On its Web site, the White House Budget Office says the program to send astronauts to the moon is behind schedule, over budget and overall less important than other space investments.
The new motion picture, The Book of Eli, is still filling up movie theaters.The Bible is at the center the post apocalyptic film. But there is some debate about whether it’s a Christian film.Actor Denzel Washington portrays Eli, a man who survives a world war and holds the one remaining Bible. Eli is on mission to protect the book as he takes a 30 year westward walk across the country.
The world’s most famous climate change expert is at the center of a massive controversy as the leading environmental science institute he heads scrambled to explain its assertion that the Himalayan glaciers will melt completely in 25 years.
Rajendra Pachauri, head of the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and director general of the Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) in New Dehli, India, said this week that the U.N. body was studying how its 2007 report to the United Nations derived information that led to its famous conclusion: that the glaciers will melt by 2035.
Today, the IPCC issued a statement offering regret for the poorly vetted statements. “The Chair, Vice-Chairs, and Co-chairs of the IPCC regret the poor application of well-established IPCC procedures,” the statement says, though it goes short of issuing a full retraction or reprinting the report.
Pachauri told Reuters on Monday that the group was looking into the issue, and planned to “take a position on it in the next two or three days.”
While pro-life supporters marched in Washington, D.C., on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, Friday, an abortion-related trial began in Kansas.Scott Roeder confessed to killing Dr. George Tiller who was one of the few late term abortion providers in the country.As Roeder’s murder trial gets underway on the 37th anniversary of the ruling that legalized abortion, activists on both sides of the issue focused in.The prosecution began by playing 911 calls from witnesses.Police say Roeder walked into a Kansas church last May, and shot Tiller at point blank range and threatened two others.”I saw out of my right vision. I saw a flash and I heard a pop, to me sounded like a balloon popping,” witness Kathy Wegner recalled. “Then I just saw Dr. Tiller just fall flat on his back. I just saw him flat on his back and I thought, ‘why is he there?’”
Scott Brown’s shot heard ’round the political world left congressional Democrats stunned and befuddled about what to do next in the yearlong push to overhaul the country’s health care system.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and his top lieutenants emerged from a Wednesday morning strategy session with no clear path to proceed in the health care fight, while Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) could only repeat her well-worn promise that Congress “will move forward.”
“People just have different feelings about this,” said Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.). “This was obviously not a good day for us. To be honest, you have to sit back and reassess and move forward.”
Is security a sword of Damocles hanging over Linux, just waiting for its popularity to reach critical mass? That’s one persistent argument in the Linux vs. Windows debates, but it’s just wrong, according to those who know Linux well. For reasons both technological and behavioral, they say, Linux really is more secure. “If the anti-malware industry has anything to offer GNU/Linux,” challenges blogger Robert Pogson, “let them step up.”Among all the reasons geeks choose Linux, security is often near the top of the list.And no wonder — personal preferences aside on all the other many relevant issues, there’s plenty of evidence to suggest our favorite operating system really is more impervious.A study published in The Register a few years back, for example, not only concluded that Linux security then was even better than had been thought compared to Windows security, but also went on to label as “myths” and “logical errors” many of the most common arguments to the contrary — most notably, the oft-repeated idea that Linux suffers fewer attacks simply because it has fewer users than Windows does.Yet when news came out last month that an attack by the “NULL Pointer” bug could exploit even a fully patched Linux kernel, a new cloud of dust was kicked up. Those on both sides of the operating system fence struggled to understand what it meant. “The headlines for this Linux security hole read like the apocalypse,” Slashdot blogger yagu told LinuxInsider. “The reality is much less severe.”First and foremost, “to fully take advantage of the exploit, a user must have physical access,” he explained. “By definition, physical access is already a compromised system. Any security issues past that point is simply splitting semantic hairs.”Linux is far more secure than Windows, yagu asserted.
An eye-opening book titled The Language Police lists about 500 words that are banned from school textbooks. Some are amusing, some stupid (probably a banned word), and some are chilling. Here is a very partial list of banned words:
Founding Fathers—Banned as sexist. Replace with Founders or Framers. (Because we would not want to note that the men who wrote the documents were men)
Caveman—Banned as sexist, replace with cave dweller. (Wonder if that makes the Geico Cave . . . uhhh . . . dweller feel a little better?)
Disadvantaged—Banned, replace with reference to the resources or rights that are absent in an individual’s life circumstances. (Example: Dave cannot sing because of resources that are absent in his individual life circumstance. Like talent.)
Courageous—Banned as patronizing when referring to persons with disabilities. (Some of the most courageous people I know are those who are disabled. I really don’t get this one.)
God—Banned for being . . . steady yourself . . . too religious. (I can’t even muster the strength to respond.)
Lunatic—Banned as offensive, replace with person with a psychiatric illness. (C.S. Lewis would have to change his famous argument about Jesus being Lord, liar, or lunatic. His PC argument would be something like this: Is the revered moral teacher a higher power, untrustworthy source, or person with a psychiatric illness? Kind of loses its pizzazz doesn’t it?
Soda—Banned for regional bias, replace with Coke, Pepsi. (Seriously? Regional bias? I grew up drinking “pop” and moved to “Coke” territory. That has not been my biggest life issue so far.)
Teenager—Banned, replace with adolescent. (I was all for banning teenagers at various times in my household. Especially when they acted like lunatics.)
“who has saved us and called us to a holy life—not because of anything we have done but because of his own purpose and grace. This grace was given us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time,”
* Douglas C. Engelbart, of the Stanford Research Institute, demonstrates his system of keyboard, keypad, mouse, and windows at the Fall Joint Computer Conference in San Francisco's Civic Center. He demonstrates use of a word processor, a hypertext system, dynamic file linking, and remote collaborative work with colleagues on a shared screen.
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* Pro-Lifers March
* Dems in disarray.
* Linux more secure.
* Banned Words.
* Dr. Francis Collins nominated. 2010-01-23
The Return of Steve Jobs-Supreme Court overturns racial promotions decision by Obama nominee Sotomayor-Conyers Backs off ACORN Investigation 2009-06-29
