Jim

Answer: Posting in Spray No. I called my senators and representatives today. I visit each of their offices once a year to discuss current legislation. I go to DC for work a couple times a year and make it a point to stop by with a letter and talk to the aids. I volunteer at two groups - one on environmental resource issues and one on social issues. How about you? If you have some free time email me and I'll put you in touch with some volunteer coordinators. Or you could continue to sit on your hands like most people.

Change it to volvo and McDonalds if you want then. The point (I'll spoon feed you here) is the abundance of apathy of the American public. I'm quite surprised the Republican Senate is drinking this koolaid. Some of them can be pretty good at standing up for individual rights afforded by the Constitution. Not this close to November in a tough election year I guess. Gotta hand it to Rove, he knows timing and how to keep the party in their ranks.

While the referred to statement is a bit dramatic, read the legislation. It is scary and certainly betrays our conutries democratic foundations. But --- no reason to trouble yourself with details. As long as the Hummer is full of gas and the drive in Starbucks is open.

I'd say these are some of the darker days for democratic values in recent memory. And most people will not be able to proudly answer their children in years to come when the ask "What were you doing about all this when it was happening?"

The passivity of the populace on this and related issues is quite astounding. "Well, ok, you can stick a GIS tracking device up my nose if it will help the war on terror" This administration has been hell bent on consolidating executive power from the get go, and the Republican-run Congress has rubber-stamped it all. I'm quite surprised that most of the Republican senators went along with this one thought, it is really out there. The House will pass anything brought to them.

They have painted themselves in a corner with their rhetoric, starting with "War on Terror". Idiots. They are not very sophisticated in world affairs. Why weren't more troops devoted to Afganistan instead of the current half-hearted effort? Obviously because they were planning for Iraq. Now the Taliban is on the rise with poppy production and the government is not functional outside of Kabul. And if Iraq was such a threat, similar to Nazi Germanay, why didn't we impose a draft and expect similar national sacrafice such as a tax to pay for all this? We're stretched, the terrorists know it, and we haven't sufficient forces in either country. Bush will stay the course through his term - which means doing nothing. The next president, Republican or Democrat, will be forced to explain that we have done the best we can (like a bull in a china shop) and withdraw.

Yea - that clears it up!! "BODIES... The Exhibition, relies on documentation from a country with a problematic human rights record. Even at best, its exhibitors say the bodies were not formally donated by people who agreed to be displayed." "But Arthur Caplan, director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, is uncomfortable with the practice. Regardless of the law, the use of unclaimed bodies in human-anatomy exhibits is questionable, Caplan says. "There's a fine line between education and exploitation in these kinds of exhibits. And you only want people to be displayed if you have their consent, not the consent of a third party," he said. Since the bodies are either unclaimed or unidentified, obtaining consent was impossible, Glover said" How convenient.

This exhibit is not without controversy. Google and you can find links to Seattle and NY Times articles regarding the show and the refusal of the exibition owners to produce any death certificates or signature releases to the press. And their links to somewhat shady organizations in China. Fulan Gong is requesting the boycott of this and other types of shows because of their percieved link of missing members and the lack of a paper trail. Despite what the show producers claim, something smells funny here and it ain't formaldehyde. Lots of money to be made on both ends of the market. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5637687

Maybe it's a changing number but CC.com was #13 when I looked. Climbing the charts?

I was born OK the first time, thanks.

Yea. They should take the example of the current crop of conservatives and stick the bill to their grandchildren. Now that's sound fiscal management.

It is very important for the American people to understand that in order to protect this country, we must be able to interrogate people who have information about future attacks," Bush said. "I will resist any bill that does not enable this program to go forward with legal clarity. "If there's not clarity, if there's ambiguity, if there's any doubt in our professionals' mind if they can conduct their operation in a legal way, with support of the Congress, the program won't go forward and the American people will be in danger," Bush said. .......I think there was much spittle assocated with this tirade.

They're the ones giving the orders these days.

Unfortunately I think your signature line says it all.

You must be with Fox News - here's the full quote: President Bush made a rare visit to Capitol Hill on Thursday as key Republican senators who oppose the administration's military tribunal plan for suspected terrorists gained a powerful ally -- the president's former secretary of state.

U.N. Inspectors Dispute Iran Report By House Panel Paper on Nuclear Aims Called Dishonest By Dafna Linzer Washington Post Staff Writer Thursday, September 14, 2006; A17 U.N. inspectors investigating Iran's nuclear program angrily complained to the Bush administration and to a Republican congressman yesterday about a recent House committee report on Iran's capabilities, calling parts of the document "outrageous and dishonest" and offering evidence to refute its central claims. Officials of the United Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency said in a letter that the report contained some "erroneous, misleading and unsubstantiated statements." The letter, signed by a senior director at the agency, was addressed to Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.), chairman of the House intelligence committee, which issued the report. A copy was hand-delivered to Gregory L. Schulte, the U.S. ambassador to the IAEA in Vienna. After no WMDs were found in Iraq, the IAEA came under additional criticism for taking a cautious approach on Iran, which the White House says is trying to build nuclear weapons in secret. At one point, the administration orchestrated a campaign to remove the IAEA's director general, Mohamed ElBaradei. It failed, and he won the Nobel Peace Prize last year. Yesterday's letter, a copy of which was provided to The Washington Post, was the first time the IAEA has publicly disputed U.S. allegations about its Iran investigation. The agency noted five major errors in the committee's 29-page report, which said Iran's nuclear capabilities are more advanced than either the IAEA or U.S. intelligence has shown. Among the committee's assertions is that Iran is producing weapons-grade uranium at its facility in the town of Natanz. The IAEA called that "incorrect," noting that weapons-grade uranium is enriched to a level of 90 percent or more. Iran has enriched uranium to 3.5 percent under IAEA monitoring. When the congressional report was released last month, Hoekstra said his intent was "to help increase the American public's understanding of Iran as a threat." Spokesman Jamal Ware said yesterday that Hoekstra will respond to the IAEA letter. Rep. Rush D. Holt (D-N.J.), a committee member, said the report was "clearly not prepared in a manner that we can rely on." He agreed to send it to the full committee for review, but the Republicans decided to make it public before then, he said in an interview. The report was never voted on or discussed by the full committee. Rep. Jane Harman (Calif.), the vice chairman, told Democratic colleagues in a private e-mail that the report "took a number of analytical shortcuts that present the Iran threat as more dire -- and the Intelligence Community's assessments as more certain -- than they are." Privately, several intelligence officials said the committee report included at least a dozen claims that were either demonstrably wrong or impossible to substantiate. Hoekstra's office said the report was reviewed by the office of John D. Negroponte, the director of national intelligence. Negroponte's spokesman, John Callahan, said in a statement that his office "reviewed the report and provided its response to the committee on July 24, '06." He did not say whether it had approved or challenged any of the claims about Iran's capabilities. "This is like prewar Iraq all over again," said David Albright, a former nuclear inspector who is president of the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security. "You have an Iranian nuclear threat that is spun up, using bad information that's cherry-picked and a report that trashes the inspectors." The committee report, written by a single Republican staffer with a hard-line position on Iran, chastised the CIA and other agencies for not providing evidence to back assertions that Iran is building nuclear weapons. It concluded that the lack of intelligence made it impossible to support talks with Tehran. Democrats on the committee saw it as an attempt from within conservative Republican circles to undermine Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who has agreed to talk with the Iranians under certain conditions. The report's author, Fredrick Fleitz, is a onetime CIA officer and special assistant to John R. Bolton, the administration's former point man on Iran at the State Department. Bolton, who is now ambassador to the United Nations, had been highly influential during President Bush's first term in drawing up a tough policy that rejected talks with Tehran. Among the allegations in Fleitz's Iran report is that ElBaradei removed a senior inspector from the Iran investigation because he raised "concerns about Iranian deception regarding its nuclear program." The agency said the inspector has not been removed. A suggestion that ElBaradei had an "unstated" policy that prevented inspectors from telling the truth about Iran's program was particularly "outrageous and dishonest," according to the IAEA letter, which was signed by Vilmos Cserveny, the IAEA's director for external affairs and a former Hungarian ambassador. Hoekstra's committee is working on a separate report about North Korea that is also being written principally by Fleitz. A draft of the report, provided to The Post, includes several assertions about North Korea's weapons program that the intelligence officials said they cannot substantiate, including one that Pyongyang is already enriching uranium.

While he was AWOL during the Iraq debate he has come out against the administration's attempt to set aside the Geneva Conventions for prisoners. http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/09/14/congress.tribunals/index.html

Those are colons ding-dong.

Pot:Kettle:Black

I think this clearly shows the need for a plant taxonomy forum

No - not pine drops. It's one of the coralroots, likely western coralroot - Corallorhiza maculata ssp mertensiana. It's a fairly common orchid. It's a saprophyte, that gets it's nutrition from decaying vegetation rather than from photosynthesis. It has no chlorophyll. Pinedrops (Pterospora andromedea) is readily identifiable by the persistent drooping seed pods.

"He “is definitely intelligent . . . certainly smart enough to be president of the United States”, says Dean Keith Simonton, a psychologist at the University of California"

KABUL, Afghanistan (CNN) -- The Taliban have claimed responsibility for a massive suicide car bombing that killed at least 18 people -- including two U.S. soldiers -- near the U.S. Embassy in Kabul. "A coalition convoy was the target of a vehicle-borne improvised explosive device this morning near the U.S. Embassy here," according to Master Sgt. Chris Miller. The convoy was comprised of three armored Humvees. Journalist Tom Coghlan said the Humvee that bore the brunt of the explosion had its turret blown 30 yards from the site the the attack. The blast spread debris and body parts across the Massoud roundabout, about 50 yards from the embassy. (Watch flames, smoke pour from the wreckage of the car used as a deadly bomb -- 1:10) Video from the scene showed a charred, severed foot on the ground as military medics attended to a limp body dressed in military fatigues a short distance away. CNN's Anderson Cooper, at the scene of the attack, said: "This is a real sign of a resurgence of the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan. It is also a sign that the Taliban are increasingly adopting al-Qaeda-style tactics." (Watch Anderson Cooper reach the bloody blast site -- 0:50)

It is unfortunate but it is a primary source of information for may a folk. And given the sorry state of mass media in this country, and lack of any critical thinking by the reciepients, it goes far in explaining our current state of affairs. And I think K is correct. That is the current view of a majority of the US - they don't give a shit about much related to civic affairs or politics. It's not my job man.

After letting the dust settle on this one I find it curious why the conservative commentators are linking the Armitage confession with abosolution to the administration. Below is from the author of Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War. Another book regarding the administrations lies. *At the time of her outing, Valerie Wilson was an undercover officer in the CIA whose mission had been to gather intelligence about WMDs in Iraq. She was the operations manager of the Joint Task Force on Iraq, a unit in the clandestine service of the CIA. This unit desperately tried to obtain evidence to back up the Bush administration's assertions about Saddam's WMDs, yet it found no such evidence. * Richard Armitage, the deputy secretary of state, was the original leaker in the CIA leak case. But as he was disclosing information to columnist Robert Novak. Karl Rove, Scooter Libby and other top White House aides were engaged in a fierce campaign to discredit Joseph Wilson. Rove even told MSNBC anchor Chris Matthews that the Wilsons "were trying to screw the White House so the White House was going to screw them back." I heard the author on the radio and he says (and wrote with sources) that yes the administration was out to squash and critical assessment, including Joseph Wilson. It was ironic that VPlane was actually head of a CIA group trying to find evidence to back up the president's claims regarding WMDs. See davidcorn.com for some book exerpts.