Archive for January, 2009
Order on fugitive immigrant arrests short-lived
Order on fugitive immigrant arrests short-lived
Obama’s aunt, who had lived in U.S. illegally, faces April hearing
By Ted Bridis and Eileen Sullivan
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — The Bush administration quietly withdrew in the weeks after Barack Obama’s election a rule requiring high-level approval before federal agents could arrest fugitive immigrants. Meanwhile, the future for Obama’s aunt, who had been living in the country illegally, will be determined at an immigration court hearing in April.
[in this era of terrorism, evil illegal immigrants, etc, why did it require “high level approval” to arrest “fugitive immigrants”? and why is that fact couched in a story seemingly about obama’s aunt?
Order on fugitive immigrant arrests short-lived
it’s not so much the story, but the context.
i wonder why a story like this is portrayed as either being against (or for, depending on your perspective) obama’s aunt, when the real story is in the first paragraph. “The Bush administration quietly withdrew in the weeks after Barack Obama’s election a rule requiring high-level approval before federal agents could arrest fugitive immigrants. Meanwhile, the future for Obama’s aunt, who had been living in the country illegally, will be determined at an immigration court hearing in April.” in this era of terrorism, when illegal immigration is such a hot-button issue, etc. why is “high-level approval” needed?
‘Faith’ By Geraldine Brooks
“Faith” By Geraldine Brooks, author of People of the Book:
“How come your novels always have vicars in them?”
The question came as part of the Q and A after a talk I’d given on my second novel, March, whose protagonist is a minister with the Union Army during the Civil War. My first novel, Year of Wonders, had featured a clergyman leading a rural Derbyshire village through a year of plague. My questioner had no way of knowing it, but the novel I was just then finishing, People of the Book, also had a priest in it. And a rabbi. And an imam.
Sort of like the set up for a bad joke. I hadn’t consciously set out to write about religious people and yet they kept popping up in my fiction like uninvited guests at a party. I mumbled something about being attracted to stories of the past, when religious leaders loomed so large…
Torture is Being Between a Rock and a Hard Place January 27
The Bush neocabal left office with no protection for their worthless asses. Still open is the question of whether they’re war criminals and whether they should be prosecuted. Either way, Obama has no good options.
Can Eating Breakfast Cereal Determine The Sex Of Your Baby?
Can eating breakfast cereal determine the sex of your baby?
A debate over that question in a British scientific journal shows why some observational studies should be taken with a big shaker of salt.
The original study, “You Are What Your Mother Eats,” in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, made headlines around the world last April. Researchers at Exeter and Oxford universities asked 740 pregnant women to record what they ate during pregnancy and just before. Not surprisingly, their diets during pregnancy had no correlation with their babies’ gender.
[breakfast cereal] Michael Sloan
But 56% of women who consumed the most calories before conception gave birth to boys, compared with 45% of those who consumed the least. Of 132 individual foods tracked, breakfast cereal was the most significantly linked with baby boys.
Maybe Sid Didn’t Kill Nancy…?
In one month and one day Nancy Spungen would have been turning 51 years old, had she not died from a stab wound at age 20 inside the Hotel Chelsea. Since then her death has been shrouded in mystery, with a majority of fingers pointed at Sid Vicious…
but is that all about to change? A new documentary on the troubled couple claims the Sex Pistols bassist may have had nothing to do with the death of his lover. Vicious, who died about four months later of a drug overdose, never went to trial but was always the NYPD’s prime suspect in the case. Jezebel notes that his mother “who committed suicide in 1996, always believed that her son was innocent…
asked film maker Alan G. Parker to help her prove it.” Enter Who Killed Nancy?, Parker’s new Sherlock Holmes-meets-Sid Vicious type film that traces the evening of Spungen’s murder and other…
Used MP3 Player Comes With Secret Military Files
Apparently you can pick up outdated U.S. military files for less than $10. That’s what happened to New Zealand’s Chris Ogle when he bought a used MP3 player for $9 in Oklahoma. The 29 year old then took his new device home and synced it to his computer, only to discover that it contained U.S. military personnel lists that included social security numbers and cell phone numbers of soldiers stationed overseas in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The files, most of which dated from 2005, also contained details of equipment inventories from U.S. bases in Afghanistan, and one mission briefing.
“The more I look at it, the more I see and the less I think I should be!” Ogle told TVNZ’s ONE News. While the discovery may prove embarrassing to U.S. officials, the outdated files seem to be of little consequence to national security. However, personal information like social security and phone numbers could…
“Pocket Obama” Compared To Mao’s Little Red Book By Irate Amazon Customers
A pocket sized book of Barack Obama quotations currently for sale on Amazon.com is causing a stir with customers who have slated the product, comparing it to Communist dictator Mao Tse-Tung’s “little red book”.
The “Pocket Obama”, produced by the History Company, is a small blue book filled with “quotations borrowed from Barack Obama’s speeches and writings.”
In a (presumably) tongue in cheek comment that has clearly and monumentally backfired, the sales review states, “It is an unofficial requirement for every citizen to own, to read, and to carry this book at all times.”
Popular or Not? Your Genes May Help Decide
Tucked away in the twisted strands of DNA that make you human are genes that may determine whether you are sociable or shy.
A new study comparing the two types of twins shows that genetics might affect social behavior, and the scientists who made the discovery say they are closing in on some of those “personality” genes.
“Absolutely, and we’re on the case,” said James H. Fowler, an associate professor of political science at the University of California, San Diego, and lead author of a report in this week’s issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. “We’ve identified some, and we’re waiting for further tests for verification.”
Time Running Out For A Two-State Solution?
60 Minutes: Getting a peace deal in the Middle East is such a priority to President Obama that his first foreign calls on his first day in office were to Arab and Israeli leaders. And on day two, the president made former Senator George Mitchell his special envoy for Middle East peace.
Mr. Obama wants to shore up the ceasefire in Gaza, but a lasting peace really depends on the West Bank where Palestinians had hoped to create their state. The problem is, even before Israel invaded Gaza, a growing number of Israelis and Palestinians had concluded that peace between them was no longer possible, that history had passed it by.
Obama’s Interview On Arab Television
President Obama reached out to the Muslim world Monday in an exclusive interview on Arab television channel Al Arabiya.
“In all my travels throughout the Muslim world, what I’ve come to understand is that regardless of your faith — and America is a country of Muslims, Jews, Christians, non-believers — regardless of your faith, people all have certain common hopes and common dreams,” Obama said in the wide ranging interview, a transcript of which can be found here.
Iceland’s Government Topples Amid Financial Mess
Iceland’s coalition government collapsed on Monday after an unprecedented wave of public dissent, plunging the island nation into political turmoil as it seeks to rebuild an economy shattered by the global financial crisis.
Thousands of angry citizens have joined noisy protests against the government’s handling of the economy, clattering pots and kitchen utensils in what some commentators called the “Saucepan Revolution.”
Prime Minister Geir Haarde resigned and disbanded the government he’s led since 2006. Haarde was unwilling to meet the demands of his coalition partner, the Social Democratic Alliance Party, which insisted on choosing a new prime minister in exchange for keeping the coalition intact.
The value of the country’s krona currency has plummeted, hitting many Icelanders who took out special loans denoted in foreign currencies for new homes and cars during the boom years. In addition, Iceland must repay billions of dollars to Europeans who held accounts with subsidiaries of…
The Way We Were: Art and Culture in the Bush Era
NEWSWEEK: If artists depend on angst and unrest to fuel their creative fire, then at least in one sense the 43rd presidency has been a blessing. Eight years is an eternity in the life of a culture, and when we look back on an era, we do it through pinholes: a movie here, a book there. What will stand out, decades from now, as the singular emblems of this moment in history? NEWSWEEK asked its cultural critics to pick the one work in their field that they believe exemplifies what it was like to be alive in the age of George W. Bush.
TELEVISION: ‘Battlestar Galactica’ By Joshua Alston
An orchestrated terrorist attack. An inexorable march to war. An enemy capable of disappearing among its targets, armed with an indifference to its own mortality. It sounds like a PBS special on Al Qaeda. In fact, it’s a synopsis of the Sci Fi…
YouTube Users Lash Out At Warner Music (And Google) With Protest Videos
Michael Arrington, TechCruch: Two things are clear in the YouTube/Warner Music scuffle. First, neither side is 100% right. And second, users are very, very angry that their videos are being pulled down or muted when they contain background music owned by Warner Music.
Those users aren’t being quiet about it, either. And scores of them are uploading protest videos to say exactly what they think. All are angry at Warner Music. And most express disappointment at Google, too, for reportedly walking away from the deal that allowed Warner’s music to be used legally on the site. I’ve embedded the “best of” below. More are being uploaded in real time, and this has the feel of a situation that is just now starting to boil over.
Barack and Michelle Obama Do WHAT Together?
Fox News in Detroit featured a segment called “The Love Doctor” that focused on the relationship between President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama:
Neo-Nazis Join ‘Adopt-A-Highway’ Trash Cleanup
Associated Press, KANSAS CITY, Mo. — A neo-Nazi group has joined the state’s “Adopt-A-Highway” volunteer litter pickup program, taking advantage of a free speech court fight won four years ago by the Ku Klux Klan.
The Springfield unit of the National Socialist Movement has committed to cleaning up trash along a half-mile section of Highway 160 near the Springfield city limits.
Two signs noting the group’s membership in the Adopt-A-Highway program went up in October but drew attention only recently when the group picked up litter as part of a gathering in Springfield.
The state says it had no way to reject the group’s application. A 2005 U.S. Supreme Court ruling arising from a similar effort by the Ku Klux Klan says membership in the Adopt-A-Highway program can’t be denied because of a group’s political beliefs.
At the time, the state could reject applications for the program from groups that denied membership based on…
Highway to Heaven: German Motorist Propelled 115 ft Into Church Roof
David Byers, Times: A German motorist missed a bend in the road, hurtled up a bank and “took off” into the roof of a church, in an accident which police said was unlike any they had ever seen.
Police in the east German state of Saxony said that the bank acted like a springboard, propelling the black Skoda 115ft through the air and straight into the building’s roof frame, where it remained wedged seven metres off the ground.
“We’ve never ever had a case of a car landing in a church before,” said Frank Fischer, a spokesman for Chemnitz police. He said that excessive speed was a possible cause for the accident while officers were also testing the driver for alcohol.
The 23-year-old was being treated in hospital for serious injuries, while the car — which was extracted from the roof by a crane — had suffered around £13,000 of damage. The cost…
CNN Uses P2P Plugin for Its Live Stream of Obama Inauguration
Ernesto, TorrentFreak: Last week, millions of people watched Obama’s inauguration on the Internet through one of the many sites that offered a live feed. CNN’s broadcast was without doubt one of the most used viewed streams, with a peak of more than a million simultaneous viewers and also one that was using P2P technology.
Despite the fact that there are thousands of legitimate uses for peer-to-peer technology, most businesses are not keen on using it because of the negative associated with it. One of the areas where P2P can really make a difference is with video streaming, either live or through sites like YouTube.
Offering a decent quality stream can quickly cost tens of thousands of dollars a month for medium sized sites, and millions of dollars for bandwidth hogs such as YouTube. So, why not share this burden and throw in some P2P? That’s probably what CNN thought too, as they…
CNN’s Howard Kurtz Renames MSNBC ‘The Obama Network’
Noel Sheppard: In the ’90s, many conservatives referred to CNN as “The Clinton News Network” due to its obvious biases towards the 42nd president.
Years later, just days after the inauguration of the 44th president, one of that network’s on-air hosts officially labeled MSNBC “The Obama Network.”
You gotta love it.
During Sunday’s “Reliable Sources,” when the subject of MSNBC came up, Kurtz said:
“Since he mentioned MSNBC, let’s play a clip from Inauguration Day, Chris Matthews getting a little excited over the festivities and talking about the role of his network, which as you know has been accused of being favorable at least in its opinion shows toward Obama.”
