Jim

Vaccinations are a requirement for attending public school unless you can show some religious reason not to be included. Seems that it's a simple public health issue. That's why our kids are no less or no more sexually active than other countries but we manage to top the charts in teen pregnancy and STDs - it's all that religious hand waving over teaching sex ed in schools. Dog forbid that we actually give them accurate information.

Actually no, it has no validity. It cracks me up when these discussion get going. Religion and science are two different spheres, they don't, or should not cross over. It you believe in the concept that the world is young that's fine. But it's faith. There is no scientific evidence to support it. A creationist once asked me "What if God created the earth with the appearance that it was old?" Now that would be a great parlor trick, but science is based on observation and deduction. I have no problem with religion and creationism, it's when the fanatics try and make the cross over and attempt to teach faith as science. The best one lately is the "Teach the Controversy about Evolution" Well get on the clue train - in Science there is no controversy. Just 'cause the bible thumpers say there is does not make it so. Keep faith where it belongs and out of the realm of science.

Congrats! And it is pub club night isn't it?

these guys are relentless in finding ways to cement control! NY Times Jan 29 WASHINGTON, Jan. 29 — President Bush has signed a directive that gives the White House much greater control over the rules and policy statements that the government develops to protect public health, safety, the environment, civil rights and privacy. In an executive order published last week in the Federal Register, Mr. Bush said that each agency must have a regulatory policy office run by a political appointee, to supervise the development of rules and documents providing guidance to regulated industries. The White House will thus have a gatekeeper in each agency to analyze the costs and the benefits of new rules and to make sure the agencies carry out the president’s priorities. This strengthens the hand of the White House in shaping rules that have, in the past, often been generated by civil servants and scientific experts. It suggests that the administration still has ways to exert its power after the takeover of Congress by the Democrats. The White House said the executive order was not meant to rein in any one agency. But business executives and consumer advocates said the administration was particularly concerned about rules and guidance issued by the Environmental Protection Agency and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. In an interview on Monday, Jeffrey A. Rosen, general counsel at the White House Office of Management and Budget, said, “This is a classic good-government measure that will make federal agencies more open and accountable.” Business groups welcomed the executive order, saying it had the potential to reduce what they saw as the burden of federal regulations. This burden is of great concern to many groups, including small businesses, that have given strong political and financial backing to Mr. Bush. Consumer, labor and environmental groups denounced the executive order, saying it gave too much control to the White House and would hinder agencies’ efforts to protect the public. Typically, agencies issue regulations under authority granted to them in laws enacted by Congress. In many cases, the statute does not say precisely what agencies should do, giving them considerable latitude in interpreting the law and developing regulations. The directive issued by Mr. Bush says that, in deciding whether to issue regulations, federal agencies must identify “the specific market failure” or problem that justifies government intervention. Besides placing political appointees in charge of rule making, Mr. Bush said agencies must give the White House an opportunity to review “any significant guidance documents” before they are issued. Peter L. Strauss, a professor at Columbia Law School, said the executive order “achieves a major increase in White House control over domestic government.” “Having lost control of Congress,” Mr. Strauss said, “the president is doing what he can to increase his control of the executive branch.” Representative Henry A. Waxman, Democrat of California and chairman of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, said: “The executive order allows the political staff at the White House to dictate decisions on health and safety issues, even if the government’s own impartial experts disagree. This is a terrible way to govern, but great news for special interests.” Business groups hailed the initiative. “This is the most serious attempt by any chief executive to get control over the regulatory process, which spews out thousands of regulations a year,” said William L. Kovacs, a vice president of the United States Chamber of Commerce. “Because of the executive order, regulations will be less onerous and more reasonable. Federal officials will have to pay more attention to the costs imposed on business, state and local governments, and society.” Under the executive order, each federal agency must estimate “the combined aggregate costs and benefits of all its regulations” each year. Until now, agencies often tallied the costs and the benefits of major rules one by one, without measuring the cumulative effects. Gary D. Bass, executive director of O.M.B. Watch, a liberal-leaning consumer group that monitors the Office of Management and Budget, criticized Mr. Bush’s order, saying, “It will result in more delay and more White House control over the day-to-day work of federal agencies.” “By requiring agencies to show a ‘market failure,’ ” Dr. Bass said, “President Bush has created another hurdle for agencies to clear before they can issue rules protecting public health and safety.” Wesley P. Warren, program director at the Natural Resources Defense Council, who worked at the White House for seven years under President Bill Clinton, said, “The executive order is a backdoor attempt to prevent E.P.A. from being able to enforce environmental safeguards that keep cancer-causing chemicals and other pollutants out of the air and water.” Business groups have complained about the proliferation of guidance documents. David W. Beier, a senior vice president of Amgen, the biotechnology company, said Medicare officials had issued such documents “with little or no public input.” The White House told agencies that in writing guidance documents, they could not impose new legal obligations on anyone and could not use “mandatory language such as ‘shall,’ ‘must,’ ‘required’ or ‘requirement.’ ” The executive order was issued as White House aides were preparing for a battle over the nomination of Susan E. Dudley to be administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs at the Office of Management and Budget. President Bush first nominated Ms. Dudley last August. The nomination died in the Senate, under a barrage of criticism from environmental and consumer groups, which said she had been hostile to government regulation. Mr. Bush nominated her again on Jan. 9. With Democrats in control, the Senate appears unlikely to confirm Ms. Dudley. But under the Constitution, the president could appoint her while the Senate is in recess, allowing her to serve through next year. Some of Ms. Dudley’s views are reflected in the executive order. In a primer on regulation written in 2005, while she was at the Mercatus Center of George Mason University in Northern Virginia, Ms. Dudley said that government regulation was generally not warranted “in the absence of a significant market failure.” She did not return calls seeking comment on Monday.

Amen. Given the demands on teachers these days if they light up once in a while who cares? I'm surprised more of them aren't main-lining. Loads of time, unreimbursed school supplies for kids, and ever increasing demands from administrators and parents make it one tough job. Given the pay rate if you start drug testing - good luck.

The axis of evil talk was another blunder. There was an opportunity for skillful diplomacy. What we have instead is ham-fisted stumbling from one self-created crisis to another.

You can check this article in the NY Times Jan 5th. Parks Agency Leaves Controversial Book on Shelf January 5, 2007, Friday By CORNELIA DEAN (NYT); National Desk Late Edition - Final, Section A, Page 14, Column 2, 561 words Also if you just actually read the article on the PEER website they have a link to the FOIA request reply from Interior that states they have no information, meaning they have not conducted any internal review of the policy. It's not so hard if you just read it.

HOW OLD IS THE GRAND CANYON? PARK SERVICE WON’T SAY — Orders to Cater to Creationists Makes National Park Agnostic on Geology Washington, DC — Grand Canyon National Park is not permitted to give an official estimate of the geologic age of its principal feature, due to pressure from Bush administration appointees. Despite promising a prompt review of its approval for a book claiming the Grand Canyon was created by Noah's flood rather than by geologic forces, more than three years later no review has ever been done and the book remains on sale at the park, according to documents released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). “In order to avoid offending religious fundamentalists, our National Park Service is under orders to suspend its belief in geology,” stated PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch. “It is disconcerting that the official position of a national park as to the geologic age of the Grand Canyon is ‘no comment http://www.peer.org/news/news_id.php?row_id=801

morons Are there different rules of engagement for each enemy, or should we just kill them all now? Wow. I wonder what his definition of "winning" is. Genocide? "Would the liberals support that?" I don't think anyone with functioning cortex would.

Because their tack is in general is "If it doesn't work just do more of it". I think your first supisition was correct. They don't want to be the ones in office when the helicopters are taking off from atop buildings in the Green Zone. I heard a good one from Condi today. She said that the diplomats in the Green Zone have been too cloistered and will get out more to see the "reality on the ground" in Iraq. Ha!! I bet that caused few resignations to be faxed in to the State Department. Hell, the upper military brass is to frightened to move out of the Emerald City w/o serious cover.

The Real Disaster The New York Times | Editorial Thursday 11 January 2007 President Bush told Americans last night that failure in Iraq would be a disaster. The disaster is Mr. Bush's war, and he has already failed. Last night was his chance to stop offering more fog and be honest with the nation, and he did not take it. Americans needed to hear a clear plan to extricate United States troops from the disaster that Mr. Bush created. What they got was more gauzy talk of victory in the war on terrorism and of creating a "young democracy" in Iraq. In other words, a way for this president to run out the clock and leave his mess for the next one. Mr. Bush did acknowledge that some of his previous tactics had failed. But even then, the president sounded as if he were an accidental tourist in Iraq. He described the failure of last year's effort to pacify Baghdad as if the White House and the Pentagon bore no responsibility. In any case, Mr. Bush's excuses were tragically inadequate. The nation needs an eyes-wide-open recognition that the only goal left is to get the U.S. military out of this civil war in a way that could minimize the slaughter of Iraqis and reduce the chances that the chaos Mr. Bush unleashed will engulf Iraq's neighbors. What it certainly did not need were more of Mr. Bush's open-ended threats to Iran and Syria. Before Mr. Bush spoke, Americans knew he planned to send more troops to pacify lawless Baghdad. Mr. Bush's task was to justify that escalation by acknowledging that there was no military solution to this war and outlining the political mission that the military would be serving. We were waiting for him to detail the specific milestones that he would set for the Iraqis, set clear timelines for when they would be expected to meet them, and explain what he intended to do if they again failed. Instead, he said he had warned the Iraqis that if they didn't come through, they would lose the faith of the American people. Has Mr. Bush really not noticed that the American people long ago lost faith in the Iraqi government - and in him as well? Americans know that this Iraqi government is captive to Shiite militias, with no interest in the unity, reconciliation and democracy that Mr. Bush says he wants. Mr. Bush said yet again that he wanted the Iraqi government to step up to the task of providing its security, and that Iraq needed a law on the fair distribution of oil money. Iraq's government needs to do a lot more than that, starting with disarming the sectarian militias that are feeding the civil war and purging the police forces that too often are really death squads. It needs to offer amnesty to insurgents and militia fighters willing to put down their weapons. It needs to do those things immediately. Iraq's Shiite-dominated government has heard this list before. But so long as Mr. Bush is willing to back that failed government indefinitely - enabling is the psychological term - Iraq's leaders will have no reason to move against the militias and more fairly share power with the Sunni minority. Mr. Bush did announce his plan for 20,000 more troops, and the White House trumpeted a $1 billion contribution to reconstruction efforts. Congress will debate these as if they are the real issues. But they are not. Talk of a "surge" ignores the other 140,000 American troops trapped by a failed strategy. We have argued that the United States has a moral obligation to stay in Iraq as long as there is a chance to mitigate the damage that a quick withdrawal might cause. We have called for an effort to secure Baghdad, but as part of the sort of comprehensive political solution utterly lacking in Mr. Bush's speech. This war has reached the point that merely prolonging it could make a bad ending even worse. Without a real plan to bring it to a close, there is no point in talking about jobs programs and military offensives. There is nothing ahead but even greater disaster in Iraq.

What we've seen time and time again, the security operations we've attempted in the past in Baghdad had two real fundamental flaws," Bartlett said. Operations did not include enough Iraqi or U.S. troops "to hold the neighborhoods we had cleared throughout Baghdad," he said. "Rules of engagement -- where troops could go, who they could go after -- were severely restricted by politics in Baghdad," Bartlett said. "That's going to change as well. --- Are these guys morons or what? Let's see, you had the chance to keep the Army intact, the Bathists in line, and could have put the screws to Muqtada and the Madi Army when they were vunerable 4 yrs ago. So you're going to try it now?? This will be interesting, and unfortunate for our troops. Has anyone told Bush that he really has no extra troops, that he is just shortening leave time and extending tours of duty? This is not what the reserve guys signed up for. And it will fail. Bush is simply putting off the inevitable until he is out of office. Someone else will have to clean up the mess. Republican or Democrat, the next president will have his hands full.

Boids It's simple. If there is a bird closure, keep off the rock. Check the ego at home already. Without getting to deep into the issue it's pretty clear from the literature that climbers are much more of a potential disturbance to nesting raptors than most, if not all, recreation activities because of the potential close proximity climbers to get to cliff nesters. I don't know the situation at Beacon but if the trail is out of sight from the nesting area it's less of an issue. Trash being tossed from the top is another story. Back to the original subject - if you feel the need to comment take a good critical eye at the proposed regulations and make some logical comments. I've been on both ends as an ecologist, assisting with legislation and reviewing it. Wacko comments are passed around for chuckles.

Touche! But seriously. While capitalism is likely the model that is the lesser of evils, it's not benign. And given the results of how it's practiced in the US, arguably the pinnacle of the model, it's not difficult to see how the rich and powerful protect their interests. I don't think Socailism is a viable option as it removes incentives and as practiced in the past there's a weathly elite at the top. More compassionate capitalism is in order. Possible? I don't know.

Liberal economics' (assuming you mean socialism) goal is to trasfer wealth more equalably (and hasn't worked well) while capitalism's (as practiced in the US)goal is to concentrate wealth, and the power to maintain it, in the hands of the pluracracy, and meets that goal very efficiently. The government that governs best is the one that governs least, except where is comes to subsidies, tax incentives, and great tax giveaways. There's a long list of current examples.

What a hoot (no pun intended)! The amount of misinformation being tossed around on these sites is amazing. Interpretations of the MBTA and NEPA (isn't Randy a lawyer?) show a complete lack of familarity with these acts and their implementation through public land management. Quite a bit over-blown I'd say. The proposed rules could use some clarification and it's good to write in to voice your concerns - but don't cut and paste any of these knee-jerk reactions posted on discussion boards. These would just get eye rolls.

I bet they can't wait for the surge. End of Another Year... You know your country is in trouble when: The UN has to open a special branch just to keep track of the chaos and bloodshed, UNAMI. Abovementioned branch cannot be run from your country. The politicians who worked to put your country in this sorry state can no longer be found inside of, or anywhere near, its borders. The only thing the US and Iran can agree about is the deteriorating state of your nation. An 8-year war and 13-year blockade are looking like the country's 'Golden Years'. Your country is purportedly 'selling' 2 million barrels of oil a day, but you are standing in line for 4 hours for black market gasoline for the generator. For every 5 hours of no electricity, you get one hour of public electricity and then the government announces it's going to cut back on providing that hour. Politicians who supported the war spend tv time debating whether it is 'sectarian bloodshed' or 'civil war'. People consider themselves lucky if they can actually identify the corpse of the relative that's been missing for two weeks

Seems like a good thing: For Immediate Release Mt. Hood Closed to Climbing to Assist Search and Rescue Efforts Sandy, OR – Effective today, December 15, 2006, Mt. Hood is closed to all climbing. The area of the mountain above the Pacific Crest Trail and the Timberline Trail is closed to everyone except the search and rescue teams directed by the Hood River County Sheriff. The purpose of the closure is intended to assist efforts to find the three missing climbers. With a forecasted break in the weather, rescuers plan an all out effort to find the missing climbers. By keeping everyone out of the area, the sheriff will be able to eliminate any false clues left by others such as tracks or cell phone signals. The public is asked to abide by this closure.

Rats! Ride home will be a bit cool and no hot water at home. Come on Seattle City Light!

Agreed. There other places to go. Keep the ego in check and give the SAR guys a break and a wide bearth.

Windy This has gotta be a government agency, right?

...bicycle commuting. Soggy and windblown. Even had a woman in an SUV ask if I wanted a ride home on Monday. Almost blown over going north-south downtown. Dave - have you been keeping the rubber side down?

Correct. The person's whose house was damaged will be covered by their own house insurance, even if the tree was on your property. Speaking from experience. During a November wind storm ('98?) a tree in my yard fell over and wiped out my neighbor's fence and part of their back porch. Their insurance covered it.

I have. Many times, it's great. As is the Gettysburg Address and his speech at Cooper Union. I think you need to conduct a little history research rather than just trying to wedge your preconcieved notions into their appointed box.

Excerpt from: Mark A Noll, "The Ambiguous Religion of President Abraham Lincoln": Considerable uncertainty arises... when Lincoln's own religion is examined... it is obvious that Christianity exerted a profound influence on his life. His father was a member of Regular Baptist churches in Kentucky and Indiana. Lincoln himself read the Bible throughout his life, quoted from it extensively... during his years as president he did regularly attend the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church in Washington. On the other hand, Lincoln never joined a church nor ever made a clear profession of standard Christian beliefs... Lincoln's friend Jesse Fell [suggested that Lincoln's views on Christian theology] were not orthodox... It is probable that Lincoln was turned against organized Christianity by his experiences as a young man in New Salem, Illinois, where excessive emotion and bitter sectarian quarrels marked yearly camp meetings and the ministry of traveling preachers. Yet although Lincoln was not a church member, he did ponder the eternal significance of his own circumstances