Non Fluffy Wicca

Endangered parrots born in captivity reproduce in wild - CNN.com:


LA GARITA DE ALAJUELA, Costa Rica (AP) -- Endangered scarlet macaws born in captivity are reproducing in the wild for the first time on Costa Rica's southern Pacific coast.

The ZooAve Center for the Rescue of Endangered Species has released 100 of the birds into the wild in the past decade. But biologists didn't spot offspring until last year, biologist Laura Fournier said.

Since then, they have recorded 22 chicks born in the wild, and four more scarlet macaw couples have laid eggs, Fournier said.

The parrots once occupied all of Costa Rica. But hunting and poaching dramatically cut their population, and they are now found only in two national parks along the coast.

The biologists' goal is for 200 birds to populate an isolated coastal area.

Chicks are hatched at the ZooAve center in La Garita, northwest of Costa Rica's capital, San Jose. At 6 months, they take a 200-mile trip to the southern city of Golfito and then travel by boat to a beach and finally the isolated San Josecito conservation center, far from human settlements. There, they spend up to three months in captivity before being released.

The parrots, which live up to 80 years, can start reproducing at age 7. Of ZooAve's 86 scarlet macaws, 54 are in the reproduction program.

Many parrots in the breeding program were confiscated by environmental authorities or turned in by their former owners. Some can't leave the sanctuary because they don't know how to survive in the wild.

"Many don't even know how to feed themselves," Fournier said.

Posted by mikki at 01:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Associated Press: Penalty for Pharmacist's Refusal Upheld:


WAUSAU, Wis. (AP) — A state appeals court upheld sanctions Tuesday against a pharmacist who refused to dispense birth control pills to a woman and wouldn't transfer her prescription elsewhere.
The 3rd District Court of Appeals ruled that the punishment the state Pharmacy Examining Board handed down against pharmacist Neil Noesen did not violate his state constitutional rights, specifically his "right of conscience" to religiously oppose birth control.
"Noesen abandoned even the steps necessary to perform in a minimally competent manner under any standard of care," the three-judge panel said. The decision upheld a ruling by Barron County Circuit Judge James Babler.
Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin praised the ruling as important for women's access to reproductive health care. Several states have been wrestling with the issue of pharmacists who refuse on religious grounds to dispense birth control or "morning-after" pills.
Noessen's attorney Paul Linton said that he was disappointed but that no decision had been made on whether to appeal.
The ruling "can curtail the religious rights of pharmacists and perhaps other health care professionals," Linton said.
According to court records, Noesen was working as a substitute pharmacist at a Menomonie Kmart in 2002 when a University of Wisconsin-Stout student sought to refill her birth control prescription.
Noesen testified he advised the woman of his objection to the use of contraception and refused to fill the prescription or tell her how or where she could get it refilled.
The woman was able to get the prescription filled two days later but missed the first dose of the medication, court records said. She filed a complaint with the state Department of Regulation and Licensing.
Noesen, 34, of St. Paul, Minn., told regulators that he is a devout Roman Catholic and refused to refill the prescription or release it to another pharmacy because he didn't want to commit a sin by "impairing the fertility of a human being."
The Pharmacy Examining Board ruled in 2005 that Noesen failed to carry out his professional responsibility to get the woman's prescription to someone else if he wouldn't fill it himself.
The board reprimanded Noesen and ordered him to attend ethics classes. He was allowed to keep his license as long as he informs all future employers in writing that he won't dispense birth control pills and outlines steps he will take to make sure a patient has access to medication.
The board also found Noesen liable for the cost of the proceedings against him — about $20,000 — but the appeals court ordered the board to reconsider that decision.
Larry Dupuis, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Wisconsin, which like Planned Parenthood participated in the appeal, said the ruling struck the proper balance between patients' and pharmacists' rights.
A pharmacy should accommodate its pharmacists' religious beliefs but it can't leave "a patient high and dry," Dupuis said.
Noesen said the discipline "critically devastated" his business as a traveling pharmacist because some pharmacies refused to hire him and he lost his liability insurance, court records said.
There was no telephone listing for Noesen in St. Paul. Linton said he had not talked to Noesen in several months and didn't know whether he still lived in St. Paul.

Posted by mikki at 09:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Pagan Prattle Online: Bargain of the Day: Good stuff, for a change.:


Englandshire: Dr. Who fans could find themselves a bargain as the memorabilia collection of Simon White goes on sale after he swapped science fiction for fantasy.

The collection, which Mr White estimates is worth nearly £7,000, was built up over a number of years but is to be cast aside because of his religious beliefs.

Dr Who and his materialistic obsession with it represents the greatest lie that Satan ever told according to Mr White...

He said: God delivered me from the evil that is Dr Who.
Don't offer too much now. We wouldn't want to reward him for his sinfulness now, would we?

Posted by mikki at 09:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Religion Clauses in the 21st Century: Symposium Papers:

ACS and the West Virginia Law Review are pleased to announce that papers written for "The Religion Clauses in the 21st Century" symposium held at the West Virginia University College of Law are now available. Video excerpts of the panelists discussing symposium topics are also available.
Written by scholars in the law of church and state, the symposium papers reflect perspectives on issues organized according to these themes: "The Religion Clauses in Institutional Contexts" "Government Religious Expression," "Accommodation of Religion," and :Religion and Politics"
Over the next few weeks, ACSBlog will publish short introductions by the authors to a number of the articles. A list of the papers written for the symposium can be found below the fold.

• "Introduction" by William P. Marshall, Vivian E. Hamilton, and John E. Taylor
• "Life After the Establishment Clause" by Steven G. Gey
• "Substantive Neutrality Revisited" by Douglas Laycock
• "Instruments of Accommodation: The Military Chaplaincy and the Constitution" by Ira C. Lupu and Robert W. Tuttle
• "Reconciling the Irreconcilable: Military Chaplains and the First Amendment" by Steven K. Green
• "Public School Students' Religious Speech and Viewpoint Discrimination" by Kirsti L. Bowman
• "Why Student Religious Speech is Speech" by John E. Taylor
• "Uncivil Religion: Judeo-Christianity and the Ten Commandments" by Frederick Mark Gedicks and Roger Hendrix
• "'Sectarianizing' Civil Religion? A Comment on Gedicks and Hendrix" by Steven D. Smith
• "The Establishment Clause and Religious Expression in Governmental Settings: Four Variables in Search of a Standard" by Daniel O. Conkle
• "Establishment Clause Limits on Free Exercise Accommodations" by Kent Greenawalt
• "When Accommodations for Religion Violate the Establishment Clause: Regularizing the Supreme Court's Analysis" by Carl H. Esbeck
• "Responsible Freedom Under the Religion Clauses: Exemptions, Legal Pluralism, and the Common Good" by Angela C. Carmella
• "Religious Exemptions and the Common Good: A Reply to Professor Carmella" by Laura S. Underkuffler
• "Deep Purple: Religious Shades of Family Law" by Naomi Cahn and June Carbone
• "Religious v. Secular Ideologies and Sex Education: A Response to Professors Cahn and Carbone" by Vivian E. Hamilton
• "Is Public Reason Counterproductive?" by Eduardo M. Penalver

Posted by mikki at 04:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Ok folks, now how many times do we have to slowly and carefully explain that MOST of Christianity's rituals come directly from Paganism? We say it, they don't believe it, and now, oh boy....some are finally taking notice. Heh. What do ya do? You just can't educate some.

Pagan Christianity:
by Jason Pitzl-Waters

George Barna, head of the conservative Christian polling organization The Barna Group, has co-authored a new book that takes a deeper look at traditional Christian practices. The result, "Pagan Christianity", seems almost like a fun-house mirror reflection of the rhetoric you can hear from many modern Pagans. Barna, a Catholic turned conservative evangelical, and advocate for the "house church" movement, sees paganism everywhere in the modern Christian church structure. Did Christian leaders borrow/steal/sanctify elements from ancient pagan culture, philosophy, and religion? Of course they did. Few argue otherwise. Christianity leapt into the cultural and religious vacuum created within the Roman Empire when Constantine, and subsequent emperors, gradually removed the traditional/pagan faiths from power. It is only natural that the assumption of that much power and prestige would alter a previously persecuted minority faith in an overwhelmingly pagan world.

"Pagan Christianity makes an unsettling proposal: Most of what present-day Christians do in church each Sunday is rooted not in the New Testament, but in pagan culture and rituals developed long after the death of the apostles. Authors Frank Viola and George Barna support their thesis with compelling historical evidence and extensive footnotes that document the origins of our modern Christian church practices."

Posted by mikki at 04:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I'd personally like to see a lot more information on these experiments and the "modicum of training" necessary to sharpen them. I'm hoping it's not another "for only 200 payments of 19.95 you too can project naked pictures into the minds of 12 year old boys"

Has the military found proof that we are all psychic?:
Dr Chris Roe places a pair of enormous fluffy earphones over the head of a blonde 20-year-old woman. He carefully slices a ping-pong ball in half and places each piece over her eyes. He switches on a red light and leaves the room. After a few moments, the gentle hiss of white noise begins to fill the laboratory and the woman begins smiling sweetly to herself. Images of distant locations start to pass through her mind. She can sense a group of trees and a babbling brook full of boulders. Standing on a boulder is her friend Jack. He’s waving at her and smiling manically. She begins to describe the location to Dr Roe. Half a mile away her friend Jack is, indeed, standing on a boulder in a stream. The woman can "see" Jack in her mind's eye even though all of conventional science – and common sense – says it is impossible. Is this a bizarre coincidence or proof that we all possess hidden psychic powers of the type popularised in such films as Minority Report?

Startling as it may seem, the results of Dr Roe's experiments suggest that it is indeed possible to project your mind's eye to a distant location and observe what is going on - even if that place is hundreds of miles away. In fact, Dr Roe's results suggest that up to 85 percent of people possess the psychic power of clairvoyance – or the ability to remote view in technical parlance. They provide the strongest evidence yet for such psychic powers and may help explain the skills shown by mediums and account for such phenomena as ESP and deja vu. And it would appear that we can all sharpen our psychic skills with only a modicum of training.

Posted by mikki at 04:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Unique find in Luxor on excavations in the necropolis of Ancient Thebes:
The find was intact, the tomb of an Egyptian warrior who died 4,000 years ago. A team led by a Spanish archaeologist has discovered the burial chamber of an Egyptian warrior who died four thousand years ago. The tomb discovered in the necropolis is that of Iqer, whose name was found inscribed on the wooden coffin which contained his mummified body. His name means "the excellent" El Mundo says. With him were fivearrows made of reed, with many of the feathers still intact, together with two large bows.

"The archer", buried with his bows and arrows, documents those years of conflict, and reflects a complex and warlike society, which was at the same time sophisticated, cultivated, intellectual and religious," he said. Other important finds the team has made at the site include what is known as the ‘Apprentice Board,’ reported as the first full-frontal portrait of an ancient Pharaoh ever discovered. It dates back to around to 1400 BC and is now on display in the museum at Luxor. They have also found dozens of bouquets of dried flowers tied together with cord, of olive and persea more than 3,500 years old.

Posted by mikki at 04:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

SINGAPORE — A cosmetics line that extolled the virtues of "Looking Good for Jesus" has been pulled from stores in Singapore after a number of complaints from shoppers, according to media reports Tuesday.

Promising to "Redeem your reputation and more," the product line included a "virtuous vanilla"-flavored lip balm and a "Get Tight with Christ" hand and body cream, The Straits Times said.

Wing Tai Retail, which manages the British retailer Topshop, removed the line late last month after receiving complaints.

"These products trivialize Jesus Christ and Christianity," it quoted Nick Chui, 27, one of the complainants, as saying. "There are also sexual innuendoes in the messages and the way Jesus is portrayed in these products."

One product has packaging with the image of Jesus wearing a bright white robe as he looks toward the heavens, while a heavily made-up blonde woman with an arm draped across his shoulder gazes dreamily at his face.

"Why would anyone use religious figures to promote vanity products? It's very disrespectful and distasteful," the report quoted 24-year-old accountant Grace Ong, as saying.

Posted by mikki at 06:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I made a grievous mistake. I posted a comment to the nonfluffypagans list on Live Journal, calling into question the statement that one cannot be a Wiccan unless one has been initiated into a coven with lineage. The claim, of course, being that Gardner was initiated into the "New Forest Coven" and all that is Wicca must come directly from him. Therefore, by "BTW" (British Traditional Witchcraft") standards, there is this strange definition of Wicca that doesn't really make too much sense, and they get to decide who is and is not a Wiccan. I started asking questions (stupid me), and the whole thing kinda dissolved into a "you're a poopy head" match so quickly that I quickly decided it wasn't worth any more effort. Interesting for a group that considers itself "non fluffy."

Anyway, it got me to thinking. We have a religion here that was basically "created" by a guy named Gardner in the late 1940s, drawing upon already existing theology, heavily influenced by Alestair Crowley and Dorothy Valiente. Gardner claims he was initiated by Dorothy Clutterbuck of the New Forest Coven. There is no evidence that she, or the coven, ever existed prior to Gardner's claims. Therefore, there is no evidence that Gardner was ever initiated into "Witchcraft" (which they use interchangeably with Wicca), nor any evidence that he was from a coven with "lineage."

None of that withstanding, Gardner's claim that he merely revived an ancient religion also has no basis in fact. He was the first to use the term "Wicca" to refer to any type of religion, so I suppose it would be like taking something that already existed, say Mormonism, and suddenly deciding to call it "New And Improved Salamander Babble" and declaring it ancient. Just doesn't seem to make much sense.

So who can call oneself Wiccan? Who is a "real" Wiccan? And who gets to decide? If BTWites have their way, only the would be Wiccan. They seem to call the rest of us either "fake" or "Neo-Wiccan" which is rather amusing given a religion that is just over 50 years old. (Please note, I'm not saying there is no such thing as a traditional witch or traditional witchcraft knowledge that may have been passed down over the years in one form or another, but that is not Wicca.) Using BTW as a distinction from, let's say UEW, is not quite good enough, and the label must be tweaked into superior and inferior levels of Wiccanness.

I seem to have a rather strange view of who is and who is not Wiccan. Although there are many different definitions, to me, Wicca is a polytheistic religion (one that truly believes in multiple Gods, not "three that are one," not "all are facets of one big diamond" or "all Gods are one God") that believes in at the duality of Deity, consisting of a male and a female, AND identifies as Wiccan. UEW defines Wicca as any religion that calls itself Wicca, AND believes in a god/force/power/whatever that is either genderless, both genders or manifests as a male/female polarity that we agree to call "the Lord and Lady." AND upholds the Five Points of Wiccan Belief. Those Five Points are the Rede, the Law of Return, the Ethic of Self Responsibility, the Ethic of Attunement, and the Ethic of Constant Improvement. More about that on the UEW Website

What I am trying to point out is that the whole idea of what is and is not "real true Wicca" and who can and cannot call themselves a "real true Wiccan" is a rather strange mishmash. The BTWs seem to say that you can't be Wiccan unless you were initiated (which they can't prove their founder was) into a coven with some sort of lineage (which they can't prove their founder was) regardless of your belief system, regardless of what you believe Deity is, and regardless of how you live your life. I don't understand this. Perhaps I'm missing an important point.

This calls to mind the old Ken-L-Ration commercials where the kid sang "My dog's better than your dog cuz he eats Ken-L-Ration" regardless of whether it makes him fart up a storm and leave dog pooh on your carpet. Some use of "better" I'm not familiar with.

And so, in closing...you BTWs are poopy heads. So there!

Posted by mikki at 11:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Judge to Navy: Limit sonar training - CNN.com:


LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- The Navy must follow environmental laws placing strict limits on sonar training that opponents argue harms whales, despite President Bush's decision to exempt it, a federal judge ruled Monday.


A federal judge ruled that the Navy must limit sonar training that some say hurts whales.

The Navy is not "exempted from compliance with the National Environmental Policy Act" and a court injunction creating a 12 nautical-mile no-sonar zone off Southern California, U.S. District Judge Florence-Marie Cooper wrote in a 36-page decision.

"We disagree with the (exemption) judge's decision," White House spokesman Tony Fratto said. "We believe the (exemption) orders are legal and appropriate."

Navy spokeswoman Lt. Cmdr. Cindy Moore said the military was studying the decision.

The president signed a waiver January 15 exempting the Navy and its anti-submarine warfare exercises from a preliminary injunction creating a 12 nautical-mile no-sonar zone off Southern California. The Navy's attorneys argued in court last week that he was within his legal rights.

Environmentalists have fought the use of sonar in court, saying it harms whales and other marine mammals.

"It's an excellent decision," said Joel Reynolds, attorney for the National Resources Defense Council, which is spearheading the legal fight. "It reinstates the proper balance between national security and environmental protection."

The Navy last week wrapped up a training exercise by the carrier strike group of the USS Abraham Lincoln in which sonar was used. There are currently no task force training exercises off the coast of California using sonar.

When he signed the exemption, Bush said complying with the law would "undermine the Navy's ability to conduct realistic training exercises that are necessary to ensure the combat effectiveness of carrier and expeditionary strike groups."

Said Reynolds: "I've always felt that the president's actions were illegal in this case, and the judge has affirmed that point of view with the decision today

Posted by mikki at 11:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

10km nearer to heaven, and God still pays no attention:
Canada/Ireland: A Toronto-Heathrow flight had to be diverted to Shannon, Ireland, after the First Officer apparently suffered some kind of breakdown.

A passenger said the pilot was carried from the plane shouting and swearing, saying he wanted to talk to God....
He was very, very distraught. He was yelling loudly at times, he told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

He was swearing and asking for God and very distressed. He basically said he wanted to talk to God.

Pilot 'breakdown' diverts flight—BBC News, 30th January 2008.

Posted by mikki at 10:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Catholic upset that nuns are human:

United States: A religious extremist has complained about an advertisement for a Boston gym featuring nuns in a life drawing class. Or more precisely, he complains that the object of his fetishism has been depicted as normal human beings, with human failings, as the Sisters are clearly tempted by the buff young man modelling for them.

C.J. Doyle of the Catholic Action League of Massachusetts told the Herald the ad portrays a callous contempt for the sensibility of Catholics.

Naked-Man Ad Riles Hub Catholics—WCVB TV, 30th January 2008.

Posted by mikki at 10:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Lab setup creates out of body experiences:


Scientific American reports on simple lab setup involved a video camera and a head-mounted display to generate out of body experiences.

Last year, two research groups induced out-of-body experiences in healthy participants with virtual reality techniques. The experiments, described last August in studies by H. Henri Ehrsson and Olaf Blanke and colleagues in Science, demonstrate that out-of-body experiences, previously confined to the realms of psychiatry, fiction and the occult, occur when the normal processing of sensory information is disrupted. This research provides an important tool to understand how the feeling of self is generated by the brain.

The participants wore virtual reality goggles connected to video cameras that filmed the participants’ backs. Thus each participant saw his or her own body from the back ... To complete the illusion, the scientists used two plastic rods to stroke synchronously, for 1 or 2 minutes at a time, the participant’s back and the back of the virtual body. Next, the participants were asked to complete a questionnaire to evaluate their subjective perception of the illusion. Amazingly, they reported feeling as if they were being behind their physical bodies and looking at them from this location. The illusion failed when the stroking was asynchronous.

Link (Via Further: Strange Attractor & beyond)

Posted by mikki at 12:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Missing Cat Found in Owner's Suitcase:


PALM BEACH GARDENS, Fla. (AP) - The last time cat-owner Kelly Levy saw her tiger-striped feline was before she took her husband to the airport. The 24-year-old came back to her house late Friday to find the bottom step, where Gracie Mae would usually be waiting, empty.

Levy tore the house apart looking for the 10-month-old tabby who had been spayed just days before. She and her dad took out bathroom tiles and part of a cabinet to check a crawl space and papered the neighborhood with "lost cat" signs.

Then she got a phone call.

"Hi, you're not going to believe this, but I am calling from Fort Worth, Texas, and I accidentally picked up your husband's luggage. And when I opened the luggage, a cat jumped out," Levy recalled the caller saying.

Gracie Mae had crawled into Seth Levy's black suitcase undetected, been put through an X-ray machine, loaded onto an airplane, thrown onto a baggage claim conveyor belt and picked up by a stranger.

The tabby made the 1,300-mile trip home on an $80 plane ticket Sunday night.

Posted by mikki at 09:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Top 10 Reasons to Believe Logic Over Religion:

Written by Daily Garlic

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for turning my tap water into alcohol and a never ending food basket, but I’m tired of all these people whining and telling me how to live my life. You do your thing, I do my thing, we’re all happy, but after reading that someone is paying Facebook to post a religious article titled “6 Reasons You Have To Believe In God”, I figured I’d grab my own cross and at least have fun while getting ready to be crucified for having an opinion.

The argument that because complex life exists, it must have been “created” is ridiculous, and it’s time someone said it. Yay, we have lots of chromosomes, we can see in color and keep erections for 4+ hours (commercials say see a doctor, I’d rather see a sorority house), but explaining away the unexplainable with magical explanations is as real as the emails I get from the prime minister of Nigeria who wants to send me $4 million dollars via a cashiers check.

1. “Earth is the perfect environment, it had to have been made for us”

Nai-eve. Get real. I point you to Arachaea, aka Archaebacteria and Extremophiles. These miraculous organisms live in ridiculously extreme climates. Climates much like that of, I don’t know, other planets perhaps? The point is, different kinds of life require different things. Ours needs water, oxygen and beer. Anyway, as far as we know, in the 9 planets (fuck you, Pluto still counts) we have in our Solar System, we’re the only ones with real sentient life, so I guess that means we’re the only ones right? Oh wait, I forgot about the BILLIONS+ of other planets and solar systems in other galaxies and what not that we haven’t been to or seen up close. So we’re here, great, that’s awesome, but if it were so damn perfect, Canada would be part of the United States, it wouldn’t be so damn cold here in the winter, and Yellow Stone would shoot up Budweiser. Hey, a guy can dream right?

2. Free Will - Contradicting a Contradiction

God “gives” us “Free Will” so that we can choose which path to follow. He knows what we’re going to do, but he’s “giving” us the choice to, uhm, choose what he already knows we’re going to do? To put it simply, if God can know 100% without a doubt you’re going to do it, it’s set in stone, you can’t change it, you’re just fulfilling destiny or a “plan” laid out by someone else. Either he gives us free will to do what we want (in which case there are many different paths and there is no way to KNOW which one we’ll do), or it’s all an illusion and you’ve got a puppet string coming out of your ass.

3. Hillary Clinton is leading the polls

If there is a God, and he does love us, then this would never have happened. Every time I realize my calendar doesn’t say April, I wonder if there is a God and he has a sick sense of humor, but then it would have to be a really, really sick sense of humor.

4. Evolution

I don’t actually think that evolution disproves creationism, actually if there was an “intelligent designer” this would have been an “intelligent design” to build in. It’s nature’s undo button once you figure out that giving tigers the ability to fly just wasn’t the best idea out on the market. But since the church feels that evolution cannot co-exist with creationism, point me.

5. Intelligent Designs lack of a designer

Aren’t we smart, we are truly awesome. Don’t misunderstand me, I love walking on two legs and peeing standing up, but telling me that we have to be created by a magical being just because we exist, begs questioning.

Logic dictates that if (a) we are here so we must have come from somewhere, i.e. a “designer” who is more complex and intelligent than us, then (b) a complex and intelligent designer, would also have to have come from somewhere i.e. a “designer” who is even more complex and intelligent.

If the reasoning for a God is we’re here, then where did he come from? My favorite famous lines are “he always was” and “no one knows”. Shave the wool off your back and follow the herd if you believe that. If someone HAD to have created us, they would have HAD to have been created. If our creator could have ALWAYS been or just magically appeared, then so could we have.

We can’t just assert that God is mightier and he just magically came to be, if that’s the logic, I say someone still had to find him in the bottom of a cereal box, it’s a paradox.

6. Ron Paul is behind in the polls

“Congressman Ron Paul (R-Texas) is the leading advocate for freedom in our nation’s capital.” He’s advocating for FREEDOM, come on, how can you not love freedom. He wants to legalize pot and I’ve seen him kiss at least 6 babies in the past week. He wants to get rid of the IRS, imagine a world without angry letters from those bastards! If God existed, Ron Paul wouldn’t be just President, he would have been made Co-God back in the 60s.

7. Pot is illegal but Alcohol is A-Okay

Alcohol, the leading cause of drunk driving, and as such the leading cause of alcohol-related deaths, is totally cool for me to drive down to the liquor store to pick up and binge drink on. On the flip side, lighting up a joint and scarfing down a large pizza or two will get you boned hard. If God was around, he’d rather I eat a bag of Doritos and pass out than get drunk, beat my wife and piss on the couch. The worst that can happen with pot is smoking yourself stupid and passing out, but alcohol makes people angry. Hulk mad. If only there were a God… and then Ron Paul would set the record straight.

8. Bad things happen to good people, great things happen to bad people

For a society that constantly gets the short end of the stick when it comes to miracles, I’ve never fully understood how people can whipe away such an obvious shortcoming with one or two hail marys. If we’re God’s children, how come Bin Laden hasn’t been bent over his knee and beat with a wooden spoon yet? Why the hell are people stopping to help stalled motorists and getting raped murdered, and why is it that every time a girl scout makes it to my door she’s out of thin mints? I’m sick of it. Shortbread cookies suck, they do. There, I said it. Aside from such atrocities, every single day bad people get rewarded, while good people are getting creamed on the side of the road by drunk drivers. Give credit where credit is due, if you’re an asshole, you should have karma spitting in your face, and if you’re a good-looking, stand-up guy who wants some damn thin mints, you should get some damn thin mints.

9. Blind Faith

If we’re supposed to believe in a God, and he wants us to believe in him, and the only way for eternal salvation is to believe, then why can’t he take 30 seconds to hop off his throne made of golden baby carcasses and pop in and have coffee with me tomorrow? Starbucks, 10:30, I’ll buy. If it’s such a big deal to believe, why is it not such a big deal to give a reason to believe in?

10. The proof is in dying

Ever notice how religions promise us stuff that cannot be instantly proven? One of the biggest promises is heaven after we die or in Islam they promise 72 virgins. That has got to be the lowest thing.. promising pussy in the after life for accepting their religion.

The biggest logical fallacy is that a religion can offer us millions and millions of years of heaven for accepting their beliefs for just 100 years max? What is the ratio there there, how can accepting something for 100 years or so get you something for millions of years (or eternity) to come. When something looks too good to be true, it probably is.
Conclusion

I don’t want you to change your views for me, hell I don’t care if you DO believe that Jesus is magic and my house was struck by lightning and swiftly burnt to the ground right after posting this. It’s your life, do what you want, but don’t sit back and take everything you’re told with a spoonful of sugar and a blindfold, that’s for republicans.

About the Author: David enjoys long walks on the beach, casual strolls down the boulevard and writing long and drawn out posts in his underwear in the wee hours of the morning.

Posted by mikki at 06:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Va. AG Sides With Conservative Churches In Dispute - News Story - WRC | Washington:


McLEAN, Va. -- Nearly a dozen conservative Virginia church congregations seeking to split from The Episcopal Church in a dispute over homosexuality and other theological issues received the support of Virginia Attorney General Robert McDonnell in legal papers filed this week.
The Episcopal Church, a national denomination of roughly 2 million members, sued the 11 congregations last year in an effort to regain control of church property.
The 11 congregations -- including two especially large and prominent congregations, Truro Church in Fairfax and The Falls Church in Falls Church -- voted in 2006 and 2007 to leave The Episcopal Church and realign under a network led by conservative Anglican bishops in Africa who also oppose The Episcopal Church's theological views, including its acceptance of an openly gay bishop.
The congregations, which consider themselves members of the newly formed Anglican District of Virginia, say they should keep their church property, worth tens of millions of dollars. The Episcopal Church argues that the votes are not legitimate and wants the property returned to the denomination.
In a motion to intervene filed Thursday in Fairfax County Circuit Court, McDonnell sided with the breakaway congregations on a key legal matter. The attorney general urged Circuit Judge Randy Bellows to follow a state law dating back to the Civil War era in resolving the dispute.
That law allows a majority vote of the congregation to determine ownership and affiliation when a "division" has occurred within a religious denomination.
The Episcopal Church has argued, among other things, that the state law is unconstitutional because it requires the court wade into theological issues such as whether a schism has occurred within the Episcopal denomination.
"As a matter of federal constitutional law, the Episcopal Church is simply wrong," McDonnell wrote in the motion. "The Constitution does not require that local church property disputes be resolved by deferring to national and regional church leaders."
Instead, the Supreme Court has allowed courts to decide such disputes on neutral principles, like looking at the language of property deeds. McDonnell, a Republican expected to run for governor next year, said the court should simply look to determine that the vote authorizing the disaffiliation was conducted properly.
"There is no need for the judiciary to inquire into matters of religious doctrine," McDonnell wrote. "The inquiry is entirely secular."
If Judge Bellows were to accept McDonnell's argument, it would be a major victory for the 11 congregations, but not a decisive one. The judge will have to rule on other issues before making a final judgment, including claims by The Episcopal Church that the votes to leave the denomination were done improperly.
Patrick Getlein, spokesman for the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia, said the diocese is looking at the motion and plans to provide a formal response to the court next week.
Jim Oakes, vice chairman of the Anglican District of Virginia, welcomed McDonnell's motion.
"Our parishes voted overwhelmingly to disassociate from the Episcopal Church due to its rejection of the authority of Scripture," he said. "Our decision is just one small piece of evidence that there is a widespread division within the Anglican Communion."
The dispute is being watched closely by church leaders worldwide; dozens of congregations and at least four of the 110 Episcopal dioceses in the U.S. are taking steps to break away and align with an overseas Anglican leader. The Episcopal church is the U.S. body of the 77 million member worldwide Anglican Communion.
Both sides in the Virginia dispute say they have spent more than $1 million in legal fees as the case has dragged on.
Oakes said he is "appalled at the money this is costing us" and said the congregations remain willing to settle the case amicably, despite their confidence in the strength of their case.
Bellows could rule on the constitutionality of the state law in coming weeks but is not expected to set a final trial date until September or October at the earliest.

Posted by mikki at 05:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

End of skeptic James Randi's million dollar challenge:


For ten years, skeptic magician James Randi has offered a million dollars to "anyone who can show, under proper observing conditions, evidence of any paranormal, supernatural, or occult power or event." He's just announced that the James Randi Educational Foundation is discontinuing the Million-Dollar Challenge two years from now. The money will be freed, he says, "to generally add to our flexibility" and enable the group "to do many more projects." From his note on the matter:

Now, we’re sure that there will be those who will offer all kinds of objections to this decision – though they could have simply applied and won the prize. There will be accusations that the JREF is concerned about the safety of the prize money – which was never any sort of concern, I can assure you – and there will be more claims that the money was never there in the first place. I can see the professionals out there sighing in relief that they no longer have to answer questions about why they won’t take the prize, and they’ll just wait out the remaining period that the prize is available. All that’s to be expected.



Ten years is long enough to wait. The hundreds of poorly-constructed applications, and the endless hours of phone, e-mail, and in-person discussions we’ve had to suffer through, will be things of the past, for us at the JREF.



Those who believe they have mystic powers now have two full years to apply… Let’s see what happens.

Posted by mikki at 04:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

U.Va. to Return Looted Greek Statues to Italy:


CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. (AP) - The University of Virginia plans to return two ancient Greek sculptures to Italy nearly three decades after tomb raiders looted them from Sicily.

The acroliths of the Greek goddesses were created about 525 B.C. out of cloth, wood and marble. They have been on display at the university's art museum since being donated to the university in 2002.

"We're honored that we had them," U.Va. art history professor Malcolm Bell III said. "We took good care of them. A lot of students saw them and learned from them. Now we're happy to return them to Italy."

The life-size statues were originally displayed inside a temple in Morgantina, an ancient Greek settlement near what is now the Italian city of Aidone. They are thought to represent Demeter, the Greek goddess of agriculture and grain, and her daughter Persephone, the queen of the underworld.

U.Va. hasn't disclosed who donated the statues to its museum. However, the New York Times reported in September that New York diamond merchant and philanthropist Maurice Tempelsman previously owned the acroliths.

Upon receiving the statues in 2002, the university negotiated a deal to keep them for five years, with the understanding that they would be returned to Italy afterward. The Italian government endorsed the deal.

To mark the return of the sculptures, the school will host a symposium Feb. 2 titled "The Goddesses Return."

Following the event _ which will feature discussions on museum ethics, the antiquities market and archaeological preservation _ members of the Italian police, or carabinieri, will escort the acroliths back to Italy.

"We're very pleased and grateful and happy to be getting these magnificent statues back," said Silvia Limoncini, a cultural counselor of the Italian Embassy in Washington. "It's an example of the excellent relationship between Italy and the United States."

Since their discovery in 1978, the two acroliths have traveled the world via the black market of looted antiquities. According to the New York Times, they were smuggled through Switzerland and surfaced in a London showroom in 1980. Tempelsman bought the acroliths from the London dealer for $1 million, the newspaper reported, adding that there is no indication that Tempelsman knew they had a potentially shady origin.

In the late 1980s, the statues were on display at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles. But after an Italian prosecutor notified the museum that they were possibly illegally excavated, the acroliths were returned to Tempelsman.

Upon the acroliths' return to Italy, they will be displayed at a museum in Aidone. In the coming years, the sculptures will be joined by other priceless works of repatriated art from American museums.

The return of the acroliths is especially appropriate, Bell said, because the myths of Demeter and Persephone involved themes of traveling and returning. After Persephone is kidnapped and taken to the underworld, her mother searches for her across the Earth. Meanwhile, Persephone returns to Earth once a year, heralding spring and rebirth.

Posted by mikki at 11:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Annual end-of-the-world post 2008:

So, none of last year's predictions concerning the end of the world have come true. Nor has there been any sign of Jesus. This, of course, will not stop the prophets of doom. So, what can we expect in 2008?

Last year, we started with ARMAGEDDON 2007 EZEKIEL 4 TIME PROPHECY JERUSALEM ISRAEL PROPHECIES. The person behind the site has not been put off by the predictions failing to come to pass and the page has now been born again as Bible Prophecy Revelations Armageddon 2008.

Though Armageddon did not commence in 2007 as we expected, the process leading to that war sometime in 2008, has begun.

The predictions for Jerusalem remain intact, with a disclaimer.

If probation for the Jews ended in 2007, how far are we from this dreadful war? We've already stated here on the eve of 2008 we believe it's just a couple of months away now!

And some gratuitous homophobia:

Why is such a war needed? The land of Israel has been flagrantly defiled. We believe such a war is needed to prevent the opening of any more brothels and casinos in the Holy Land! We believe such a war is needed to prevent Tel Aviv from becoming the gay capital of the world! We believe such a war is needed to prevent any more gay marches from defiling Jerusalem!

I suspect that San Francisco, Brighton and similar places hold no fear that lgbt tourists will take their money to Tel Aviv any time soon, no matter how sunny it is.

To Infinity And Beyond! has only one possibility for the coming year, and it's one of Marilyn Agee's many dates for the start of the end-times:

PRE-TRIB RAPTURE, FIRST "TRUMP OF GOD" Probably Pentecost, Sivan 6, 5768 (June 9, 2008)




TEMPLE CONSTRUCTION BEGINS

Sacrifice of the red heifer when she is four years old (she is 3.5 now)

Priests, purified with the ashes of the red heifer, start building the Temple after the Rapture




THE BEGINNING OF THE TRIBULATION, 1ST SEAL

SEVENTH DAY OF UNLEAVENED BREAD - Pre-Trib Rapture, April 26, 2008

Beginning of the 2300 days of Dan. 8:12-14 (Jewish inclusive reckoning)

First beast begins to rule...

Another obsessive cataloguer has produced The Doomsday List, which should make this job much easier in future years. The compiler notes that the majority of predictions for 2008 come from Bible Code nerds The Lord's Witnesses. They use the Jewish Calendar, but with Gregorian years, just to confuse us, and admit that they have made many mistakes in the past. Their favourite prediction concerns a nuclear strike on New York, which has been failing to happen for two years now. The most recent dates for this have passed without incident:

We now believe and calculate that it must happen somewhere along the East Coast of the US between Washington and NYC possibly at Annapolis but more likely at the UN Tower in Manhattan from 2007Tebbeth4 to 2007Tebbeth7

That's between Thursday, 13 December 2007 and Sunday, 16 December 2007. A further refinement of this has been made, but it's still in the past:

We now calculate that somewhere on the East Coast of the USA, between Washington and NYC, possibly at Anapolis or more likely at the UN Tower in Manhattan, will be hit by a sea borne dirty bomb or nuclear bomb on or before Saturday December 22nd, 2007

Here's the list of dates which will be refined in the next year:

2008 February 3/4, 2007Shebat21. The little horn of the EU corrupts the UNGA and God's people are given into his hand for 3½ Times, which are months, 105 days, until we are rescued by Jesus on 2008Sivan6.




2008 March21, 2008Nisan14, Satan loses throne and kingdom and authority, but UN does not yet, it battles with the lamb during Armageddon....




2008 March23, 2008Nisan16, Kingdom of God begins.




2008 May 5, 2008Iyyar29. The Sign of the Son of man appears in heaven at the end of the 1335 days of Daniel 12. The faithful are happy as described in Daniel 12.




2008 May 12, 2008Sivan6. Jesus comes, the 1NC saints descend as humans. They start gathering the church sons of the 1AC together to be raptured. The door of Noah is closed, no more first time entrance into the LWs, the ICC is closed other than rebpatisms. The faithless say: Lord, Lord!! The UNPBC has its second head cut off.




2008 September 18/19, 2008Tishri15. Earthly celebration of the 2NC by the great crowd, all the sons of the CRC and by all those who are raptured and by all the saints, the sons of the ARC.




2008 October 3/4, 2008Tishri30. Miriam, the sealed 1NC saints, is permitted back into the camp in heaven. 7 year kingship Malediction on 1NC saints ends. The bride has prepared herself. The Marriage of the lamb can now begin. End of LW water baptism.




2008 October 4/5, 2008Heshvan1. This is the Megiddo administration or Har Megiddo or Armageddon. This administration fights Jesus for 150 days from 2008Hesvhan6 to 2008Nisan6.




2008 October 9/10, 2008Heshvan6. Last day of Zoar, the Rapture. The ark hits the mountains of Ararat after 150 days. The 5 times of the hand of Lot and his wife and his daughters end. The 616 days of UNGA authority over God's people ends with this rapture. 50% of mankind is beamed up as angels. The UN is still in existence at this time. The war of the great Day of Jehovah, the evening meal of God, begins. Jesus attacks the Megiddo administration for the next 150 days, since Lot escaped from the Midst of the overthrow of the cities of the religious administration of Sodom and of the secular administration of Gomorrah. Lot is in the gate of Sodom, but not in the gate of Gomorrah.

And something more tangible: The world will run out of Wheat in Q1, 2008!

T. Chase of Revelation 13 is still obsessed with Vladimir Putin and remains convinced that he is the Antichrist. The world population is also approaching a significant figure:

When the world population reaches 6.66 billion in about April 2008, that may be a terrorism caused by Iran and Al Qaeda, or this could be the rise of the Antichrist, Russian President Putin.

He also uses Bible Codes, and has some specific predictions for some specific places. His dates are less specific, as any of the following events could occur any time between 2008 and 2010. Those events are:

• A Canary Islands Volcano collapsing into the sea, causing a tsunami, and Yellowstone going up. These are both things that scientists worry about.


• Possibly as a result of the above, a tsumani will hit Miami. I wonder what Florida-based Pat Robertson will make of that? The same page forecasts a threat of nuclear terrorism by Osama bin Laden and Al Qaida, an Al Qaida biological attack, an asteroid will hit in the ocean ... causing a tidal wave, a disease plague (possibly Ebola), a star which is close to supernova might actually go supernova,


• World economic chaos. Well, duh!


• Diseases: Ebola Virus, Marburg Virus, AIDS/HIV, Mad Cow Disease, Flu.

More precise dates for other events can be found on the Calendar page, where we see Christian astrology in action.

There are more Bible Code predictions at Satan's Rapture, but this site includes some more precise dates, including for May 2008, a terrorist attack using biological agents, probably Ebola, on Philadelphia in May 2008 and the assasination of Barak Obama and John Edwards, allowing Hilary Clinton to become US president in the November 2008 elections. Hilary Clinton is, of course, the Antichrist.

Another person convinced that the end is nigh in 2008 is Robert Weinland, author of 2008 - God's Final Witness. So convinced is he of this that he's made the book available as a free download, in four languages (English, Dutch, Spanish and Italian). He predicts four events will bring about the total collapse of the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and some countries of Western Europe (p. 116) and By the fall of 2008, the United States will have collapsed as a world power, or it will have begun its collapse and no longer exist as an independent nation within six months after that time (p. 244).

Let us not forget the true Russian Orthodox Church, the cult currently holed up awaiting the end of the world in May 2008.

Daniel Min also sees armageddon this year:

But it's all merely academic at this point, seeing that the 2008 election will be cancelled, and far more importantly is the great tribulation, Armageddon unto end of the world, is clearly imminent, and there is nothing anyone can do to stop it, neither postpone it: any more than they can stop the revolutions of the planets in orbit.

Posted by mikki at 07:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

You got your Jesus in my peanut butter!

Priests brawl at Jesus' birthplace - CNN.com:


ETHLEHEM, West Bank (AP) -- Greek Orthodox and Armenian priests attacked each other with brooms and stones inside the Church of the Nativity as long-standing rivalries erupted in violence during holiday cleaning on Thursday.


The basilica, built over the grotto in Bethlehem where Christians believe Jesus was born, is administered jointly by Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox and Armenian Apostolic authorities.

Any perceived encroachment on one group's turf can touch off vicious feuds.

On Thursday, dozens of priests and cleaners were scrubbing the church ahead of the Armenian and Orthodox Christmas, celebrated in early January. Thousands of tourists visited the church this week for Christmas celebrations.

But the clean-up turned ugly after some of the Orthodox faithful stepped inside the Armenian church's section, touching off a scuffle between about 50 Greek Orthodox and 30 Armenians.

Palestinian police, armed with batons and shields, quickly formed a human cordon to separate the two sides so the cleaning could continue, then ordered an Associated Press photographer out of the church.

Four people, some with blood running from their faces, were slightly wounded

Posted by mikki at 07:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Well said, well said....

American Chronicle: The Case for Christ-Free Christmas:


Christmas is only a few days off, and I think it’s as good a time as any to speak up for a segment of humanity that is too often ignored and forgotten by the media around the holidays. I speak up for this faction of society not only because I believe it to be vastly in the majority, but also because I happen to be a member. I’m talking about those of us who celebrate a secular Christmas.

My favorite time of year for as long as I can remember has been Christmas. As a child, I strung popcorn onto thread, hung ornaments from pine branches (we always bought a real tree back then), and stood alongside my mother as she baked cookies decorated with brightly colored red and green sugar. When I was young enough to still believe in him, I wrote letters to Santa Claus and left a plate cookies and a glass of milk out on the kitchen table for him. One year I even constructed a crude object d’art from yarn and glued-together popsicle sticks and left it out for Santa to take with him, labeling it in my letter simply “a toy.” I figured he could deliver it to some underprivileged child behind the Iron Curtain who wouldn’t know the difference. When I woke up that Christmas morning, my homemade toy was gone, and Santa thanked me for it in a note left on the kitchen table.

At the time it was a thrilling surprise, though now when I think about it, I am suspicious of the similarity of Santa’s handwriting to that of my mother.

My mother’s father was a minister. My father’s upbringing wasn’t nearly so religious, but he wasn’t brought up an atheist, either. Mercifully, they both decided before I was born not to push religion on me. Except for a few months when I was in first grade, when Dad temporarily let his elderly grandmother guilt-trip him into it, we never attended church. Our Christmases were centered around Santa, snowmen, food, and family. And presents, naturally, which my younger brother and I soon realized were best of all.

As an adult, I’ve outgrown Santa and snowmen, and the rapacious lust for receiving gifts, but I still treasure the time spent sitting around the tree with my mother and father, my brother, my grandmother, and, these last few years, my girlfriend. We sing no hymns, we say no prayers. Jesus, most assuredly, is not among our reasons for the season.

And good for us, because that particular bit of bumper sticker sloganeering has always gotten on my nerves. For one thing, there’s the obnoxious insistence that any Christmas celebration not centering on the Christian concept of the holiday is illegitimate. For another thing, it makes no rational sense—no matter how you look at it, Jesus is not the reason for the season.

If you take “season” to mean the season of winter, the period of the year, in the Northern Hemisphere, between the winter solstice and the vernal equinox, characterized by colder temperatures and fewer hours of daylight, then the season is the result of the 23 degree tilt of the Earth’s axis relative to its orbital plane. Jesus is neither the source, nor the cause, nor in any sense the reason for this season.

If you interpret “season” to mean the season of celebration surrounding the solstice in late December, then it is the result of virtually every culture throughout Europe and Asia marking the time of the solstice as a significant annual event. Many of these cultural celebrations predate Christianity by hundreds or thousands of years, and most have nothing whatsoever to do with Jesus. Even the connection of Jesus to Christmas is questionable; Christians take the day to mark his birth, but a careful reading of the Biblical account suggests his actual date of birth was during spring or summer. The Christmas celebration was established in late December to replace the pre-existing pagan celebrations, including Saturnalia, which were already popular in the Roman Empire before its conversion to Christianity.

So if I want to celebrate a non-religious holiday in late December, why bother with Christmas at all? There’s Yule, which is a major donor of traditions and trappings to modern Christmas—why don’t I trade in the tree for a log, and call the family to feast in honor of Thor? Because I don’t want to celebrate Yule. It means nothing to me. I want to celebrate Christmas. What the evangelical “Jesus is the reason” crowd hates to admit is that, while they weren’t looking, especially during the last hundred years or so, Christmas became a secular holiday.

Some Christians, I know, object to Christ-free secular celebrations being referred to as Christmas. “Put the Christ back in Christmas,” goes another popular slogan. But the word, like the holiday itself, has evolved beyond its origins. Modern Christmas is no more limited by the original conventions of Christ’s Mass than modern Halloween is by the Catholic celebration of All Hallows Eve.

I also don’t believe there is a war on Christmas. I’m not an officious alarmist who sees department stores and local governments wishing people “Happy Holidays” as part of an insidious scheme to delete Christmas from the public consciousness, like a certain television and radio host whom I shall not name, except to state that his initials are “Bill O’Reilly.” I know that many public schools no longer allow their show choirs to sing Christmas carols, and are even afraid to label their Christmas pageants as such, but I chalk that up to misplaced, overboard, however well-meaning, political correctness rather than some nefarious desire on the part of teachers and administrators to disenfranchise Christians.

I have no problem with schools holding Christmas assemblies, with the local, state or national governments hanging Christmas decorations on public property, or with the mayor or the governor or the president wishing us all a “Merry Christmas,” so long as we’re talking about the secular Christmas that virtually everyone in the United States, regardless of cultural or religious background, celebrates, even if only a little, and not the self-righteously pious Jesus-fest around which many church calendars revolve.

Not that I’m the type to brag about this sort of thing, but the Supreme Court agrees with me. In 2001, the highest court in the land upheld a lower court’s ruling in the case of Ganulin v. United States that Christmas served a legitimate secular purpose. It is not an exclusively religious holiday, and it hasn’t been for a long time.

Secular Christmas isn’t perfect. I’m as put-off by the commercialism and materialism surrounding it as anyone. I don’t want it to be an occasion for overindulgence or conspicuous consumption. I hate the emphasis on shopping that dominates the season, kicking into high gear the day after Thanksgiving and enduring for a solid month. Christmas is a sacred day to me. It’s a day for family and friends, for sitting around the table and eating great food, for gathering in the living room to watch Miracle on 34th Street—hell, if Dad wants to, I’ll even hold my gorge down long enough to watch It’s a Wonderful Life. Making it a secular day shouldn’t make it a cheap day, a commercial or tawdry day.

For me, it’s always been the most wonderful time of the year, and it’s never had anything to do with the birth of Jesus. If you and your family treasure your religious Christmas, if you look forward to attending church services early in the morning, if you proudly display your illuminated plastic crèche in your front yard, more power to you. You have a right to your Christmas, just as I have to mine.

Anyway, whatever your Christmas looks like, whether its central figure is a child in a manger or a fat, bearded fellow on a sleigh; whether your tree is topped by an angel or a star; whether your yard is adorned with a nativity scene or a giant inflatable snowman; whether you believe in Christ, or Santa Claus, or neither one; whether you adore it or couldn’t care less, have a good one. Merry Christmas.

Posted by mikki at 01:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Judge: White House visitor logs are public documents - CNN.com:


ASHINGTON (CNN) -- The White House must release its visitor logs and cannot hide behind a shield of privilege, a federal judge ruled Monday. The Bush administration has resisted public disclosure while it fights a lawsuit over alleged political influence by conservative Christian leaders.

The Bush administration has been fighting the release of White House visitor logs.

U.S. District Court Judge Royce Lamberth concluded the information is part of the public record and is subject to disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act as "agency records."

"Because the Secret Service creates, uses and relies on, and stores visitor records, they are under its control," said Lamberth.

He ordered the Secret Service to produce records within 20 days.

The White House claimed exclusive control of the documents, subject to the complete discretion of the president over their release.

Secret Service records have been an important tool for advocacy groups and members of Congress seeking information on the inner workings of the executive branch.

Congressional investigators used the records a decade ago in their investigations of the various Whitewater scandals involving President Clinton and his associates, as well as allegations of influence peddling by the Clinton campaign in the 1996 elections.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a self-described government watchdog group, sought the visit records of prominent conservatives James Dobson of Focus on the Family, Wendy Wright of Concerned Women of America and seven others including the late televangelist Jerry Falwell.

"CREW is pleased that the judge saw through the White House's transparent attempts to hide public documents from the American people," said Melanie Sloan, the group's executive director. "We look forward to sharing the documents we obtain through this lawsuit."

The White House and Justice Department had no immediate reaction to the ruling.

Separate legal action by CREW and other groups, including Judicial Watch and the Washington Post, sought White House visitor logs that listed lobbyist Jack Abramoff. He pleaded guilty last year to public corruption charges.

The White House and the Secret Service in 2006 signed an agreement that visitors to the White House complex were not subject to public disclosure. That "memorandum of understanding" was disclosed during legal action over the Abramoff records.

Lamberth called that a "self-serving" agreement because it was issued after the records were created and after the CREW lawsuit.

The judge, in a separate ruling Monday, said he lacked the authority to order the Secret Service to stop destroying its visitor records once copies were turned over to White House officials. But Lamberth noted the National Archives had to approve any destruction of the logs.

Another federal judge in Washington ordered the release of Secret Service logs of visitors to Vice President Dick Cheney's office. Cheney claimed those logs were subject to executive privilege. That ruling is being appealed.

Lamberth noted the Secret Service has an important "protective mission" when compiling electronic information -- including background checks -- of those seeking to enter the White House complex. But he said the agency's claim of "limited use" of the data does not mean the records are not subject to judicial review.

"This does not mean the Secret Service does not read or rely on them," wrote Lamberth. "If that were the case, any convenience store patron who has ever bought a losing scratch ticket could claim they did not gamble simply because they held the ticket for only a few minutes."

The issue of White House privilege over visitor logs has not been fully addressed by the Supreme Court.

The case decided Monday is Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington v. U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

Posted by mikki at 07:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

That's obviously their punishment. :-) for the humor impaired.

Massive 'ice-maker' stops Heartland cold - CNN.com:


DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) -- Schools closed for thousands of youngsters, Iowa's biggest airport shut down and thick layers of ice brought down more power lines Tuesday as a major ice storm glazed the nation's midsection.

At least 22 deaths had been blamed on the storm system since the waves of sleet and freezing rain started during the weekend.

Officials in Missouri, Kansas and Oklahoma had declared states of emergency, and hundreds of thousands of people had been blacked out.

Iowa's largest school district closed for the day in Des Moines, telling its nearly 31,000 students to stay home, and kids across most of Oklahoma stayed home for a second day.

Schools also were closed in parts of Wisconsin, including Milwaukee Public Schools with 85,000 students. "We thought about our kids on foot," said Milwaukee schools spokeswoman Roseann St. Aubin. Some drivers couldn't even get to their buses, she said.

Posted by mikki at 03:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Think the Pope agrees? I heard something about mobilizing a panzer division and....

Bishop backs brothel regulation - Yahoo! News:


LONDON (Reuters) - A Roman Catholic bishop in the southern English port city of Portsmouth is backing a campaign to legalize brothels without in any way condoning them.

The Right Reverend Crispian Hollis supported the local branch of the Women's Institute which wants to license brothels.

"If you are going to take a pragmatic view and say prostitution happens, I think there is a need to make sure it's as well regulated as possible for the health of people involved and for the safety of the ladies themselves," Hollis said.

"That's not to say I approve of prostitution in any way. I would be very much happier if there was no prostitution in Portsmouth," he told The Portsmouth News.

"But it's going to be there whatever we do and it has been from time immemorial. So I think that is something we have to be realistic about."

His comments won praise from Rachel Frost, from the International Union for Sex Workers.

"The bishop should be commended for having the guts to come out and say that," she said.

Posted by mikki at 02:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Shocking story. After all, what kind of monster would attack a woman on crutches anyway? Perhaps if more people WOULD get involved like this (and the mug shot of the guy that you can see if you click on the link shows that they weren't gentle in dealing with the animal) there might be fewer crimes.

Police: Good Samaritans Stop Rape In Progress - News Story - KPTV Portland:


SALEM, Ore. -- Five Good Samaritans stopped a rape in progress in a south Salem neighborhood, according to police.
Officers said a 22-year-old woman on crutches was walking near the intersection of Liberty and Boone streets southeast just before 1 a.m. Saturday when she was attacked and assaulted by 37-year-old Paul Landingham.
According to authorities, a car with five people was driving by, saw what was happening and came to the woman's rescue.
Three men pulled Landingham off the woman and held him until police arrived at the scene.

Posted by mikki at 03:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Dog Steps On Gun, Shoots Man - Des Moines News Story - KCCI Des Moines:


POSTED: 8:29 am CDT October 28, 2007
UPDATED: 8:32 am CDT October 28, 2007
TAMA, Iowa -- A Tama man was injured when hunting dogs stepped on his gun.
Officials with the Iowa Department of Natural Resources
said James Harris, 37, was pheasant hunting with a group about three miles north of Grinnell when the accident happened.

Officials said the group had shot a bird and when Harris went to retrieve it, he put his gun on the ground and crossed a fence. As he crossed the fence, hunting dogs stepped on his gun causing it to fire.

Harris was shot in the lower left leg.

He was treated at Grinnell Medical Center and later transferred by helicopter to University Hospitals in Iowa City. His condition has not been released.

Posted by mikki at 04:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

firstamendmentcenter.org: news:


AUSTIN — The Texas Supreme Court reversed lower court decisions late last week and ruled that state restrictions on what unaccredited religious institutions can call themselves and their education training violate the First Amendment.

The court, in its Aug. 31 ruling, said banning an institution like the Tyndale Theological Seminary in Fort Worth from using the term “seminary” in its name violates the Constitution.

Three religious organizations waged the legal fight. Tyndale, one of the schools, was cited in 1998 for violating a law that requires seminaries to be accredited and prevents unaccredited institutions from awarding degrees. It was fined $173,000 by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board.

Plano-based Liberty Legal Institute represented the schools and argued before the court in 2005 that the state has no business regulating how pastors are trained.

State law requires institutions to meet certain standards if they call themselves a college, university or seminary. The court ruled that the law as it pertains to seminaries intrudes upon religious freedom.

“This decision is a huge victory for all seminaries not only in Texas but nationwide,” said Kelly Shackelford, the institute chief counsel. “Seminaries are going to now be free to be seminaries. ... The shackles are off.”

The case is not about secular teaching and degrees, but about purely theological education, he said. Shackelford said the ruling means the plaintiffs can try to recover attorneys fees incurred in the case.

The Texas Attorney General’s Office represented the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board and told the court that the state law aims not to regulate religion but only the quality of post-secondary education in Texas.

The law was written to crack down on degree mills that issue certificates but require little or no coursework.

Stephanie Elsea, spokeswoman for the Higher Education Coordinating Board, said the ruling could have “far-reaching” implications but that the board would withhold further comment until it had time to review the entire decision.

The Attorney General’s Office had no immediate comment on the ruling.

Under the law, the Tyndale seminary, operated by HEB Ministries Inc., was fined for issuing 34 degrees without the coordinating board’s approval.

Tyndale was founded in the early 1990s to offer biblical education for those entering the ministry in churches and missions. By 1999 it had a small campus and enrollment of 300 to 350 students, with most of those taking correspondence courses, the court opinion states.

The Southern Bible Institute in Dallas and the Hispanic Bible Institute in San Antonio joined in the suit seeking to overturn the fines and the law.

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firstamendmentcenter.org: news:


ST. LOUIS — A federal appeals court yesterday upheld a lower court ruling that prohibited the distribution of Bibles to grade school students in a southern Missouri school district.

At issue was a long-held practice at South Iron Elementary School in Annapolis, 120 miles southwest of St. Louis, in which Gideons International representatives came to fifth-grade classrooms and gave away Bibles. A U.S. district judge issued a temporary injunction last September.

A three-judge panel of the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis, ruling in Doe v. South Iron R-1 School District, agreed yesterday that the classroom distribution should be prohibited.

Parents of some students first raised concerns about the Bible distribution in 2005. That fall, the school board voted 4-3 to allow the distribution to continue, even though then-Superintendent Homer Lewis, at the urging of the district’s insurance carrier and attorney, suggested an end to the practice. A day after the vote, the Gideons came to the school and distributed Bibles to both fifth-grade classrooms.

The American Civil Liberties Union filed suit in February 2006 on behalf of four sets of parents, asking that the district be stopped “from further endorsement of religion.”

All four sets of parents are Christian, said Tony Rothert, legal director of the ACLU office in St. Louis.

“Their objection is they don’t want the school telling their children what their religious beliefs should be,” Rothert said. “They believe that should be done at home with the family.”

Rothert said the ACLU was asking the district court to issue a permanent injunction banning the Bible distribution program.

Mathew Staver, president of Liberty Counsel, a conservative law group based in Florida that represented the school district, said the appeals court ruling concerned a practice no longer in place.

Staver said the district’s current policy allows people or groups to distribute literature — with approval from the district — before or after school or during lunch break, but not in the classrooms. The new policy is open to religious groups beyond the Gideons, he said, and is the subject of a pending court ruling at the district court level.

“That policy we will vigorously defend because we believe it’s a constitutionally sound policy,” Staver said. “It will provide for others, including the Gideons, the right to distribute literature.”

The district in Iron County has fewer than 500 students and just two schools — the grade school and South Iron High School. The rural county sits in the heart of the nation’s so-called Bible Belt and includes dozens of churches.

Gideons International, based in Nashville, distributes more than 63 million Bibles worldwide each year, according to the organization’s Web site. A spokesman did not return a phone call seeking comment.

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Wisconsin man's mangled prose takes bad writing prize; says college prepared him:


SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - A Wisconsin man whose blend of awkward syntax, imminent disaster and bathroom humour offends both good taste and the English language won an annual contest Monday that salutes bad writing.

Jim Gleeson, 47, of Madison, Wis., beat out thousands of other prose manglers in San Jose State University's 2007 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest with this convoluted opening sentence to a nonexistent novel:

"Gerald began - but was interrupted by a piercing whistle which cost him ten per cent of his hearing permanently, as it did everyone else in a ten-mile radius of the eruption, not that it mattered much because for them 'permanently' meant the next ten minutes or so until buried by searing lava or suffocated by choking ash - to pee," Gleeson wrote.

Scott Rice, an English professor at San Jose State, called Gleeson's entry a "syntactic atrocity" that displays "a peculiar set of standards or values." Rice has organized the contest since founding it in 1982.

Gleeson, who works at a Madison hospital setting up computer networks, said he submitted about 20 entries, and gave a little insight into what it takes to win the bad writing title and its US$250 prize.

"It's like you take two thoughts that are not anything like each other and you cram them together by any means necessary," Gleeson said. He claimed he took time off from his current project, a self-help book for slackers entitled "Self-Improvement Through Total Inactivity," to pen his winning entry.

Gleeson credited his time in college with preparing him well. "There's a certain degree to which academia prepares you to write badly," Gleeson said wryly.

The contest takes its name from Victorian novelist Edward George Earl Bulwer-Lytton, whose 1830 novel "Paul Clifford" famously begins "It was a dark and stormy night."

Entrants are asked to submit bad opening sentences to imaginary novels. Citations are handed out for several categories, including "dishonourable mention" awards for "purple prose" and "vile puns."

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Unearthing History At Prehistoric Glastonbury (from The Northern Echo):


STONE Age Britons from across the North-East flocked to a prehistoric "Glastonbury festival" marked by mysterious rituals, a major archaeological discovery suggests.

Experts believe tools, pottery and timber stakes unearthed near Durham City show a site within view of Durham Cathedral was a place of mass worship as far back as 3,000 BC.

What the Neolithic-era North-Easterners did during the meetings is still buried in history, but possible activities include ceremonial cremations and burials.

Steve Speak, senior keeper of field archaeology for Tyne and Wear Museums, said: "There is a whole range of different techniques here and finding out what it was used for takes a bit of Sherlock Holmes work.

"We know it's not defensive, and it's not a settlement. So you are left with one alternative - it had a spiritual use.

"It would have been a focus for people - like a prehistoric Glastonbury."

Archaeologists made the discovery while excavating the site ahead of the construction of a £3.5m drinking water reservoir.

Three man-made trenches, three raised henges and several wooden stakes, which may have been used to hold back soil, have been found.

Lee White, assistant archaeological officer at Durham County Council, said: "This is a very significant site. We have very few sites from this period in County Durham."

Mr Speak said: "Just to hold a piece of wood from 1500 BC that somebody made and used is amazing."

Archaeologists will remain on the site until October. They hope there will be public access to the site and information displayed to explain its importance.

Items unearthed will be offered to museums in the area.

Northumbrian Water says the reservoir will be used from next spring.

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Six-toed Hemingway cats can stay, city says - CNN.com:


KEY WEST, Florida (AP) -- City officials have sided with Ernest Hemingway's former home and its celebrated six-toed felines in its cat fight with the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

>The Key West City Commission exempted the home from a city law prohibiting more than four domestic animals per household.

About 50 cats live there.

The house has been locked in a dispute with the USDA, which claims the museum is an "exhibitor" of cats and needs a special license, a claim the home disputes.

The new ordinance reads in part, "The cats reside on the property just as the cats did in the time of Hemingway himself. They are not on exhibition in the manner of circus animals. ... The City Commission finds that family of polydactyl Hemingway cats are indeed animals of historic, social and tourism significance."

It also states that the cats are "an integral part of the history and ambiance of the Hemingway House."

A USDA spokesman did not return messages left late Sunday.

The cats are descendants of a six-toed cat given as a gift to the writer in 1935. All carry the gene for six toes, though not all display the trait.

Posted by mikki at 12:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

IOL: Woman stabbed Scientologist parents:


Sydney - An Australian woman accused of murdering her father and sister was apparently denied psychiatric treatment because of her parents' Scientology beliefs, a court heard on Monday.

The 25-year-old woman, who cannot be named, appeared briefly in court on Monday to be charged for the stabbing attacks at her family home in a Sydney suburb, the Australian Associated Press reported.

She made no application for bail because she was unfit to be interviewed, her lawyer Wade Bloomfield told the court.

Consultant psychiatrist Mark Cross said in a report that the woman was diagnosed with a psychotic illness at Bankstown Hospital in late 2006, the court heard.



"She had a history of being diagnosed with a psychotic illness in late 2006 at Bankstown Hospital, but follow-up from the mental health team was apparently declined by her parents because of their alleged Scientology beliefs," Cross said.

The woman is accused of fatally stabbing her 53-year-old father and 15-year-old sister and wounding her 52-year-old mother, who raised the alarm as she collapsed in a neighbour's garden.

The mother remains in a serious but stable condition after undergoing surgery for multiple stab wounds.

The woman was arrested in a nearby street shortly after the attack and was placed under police guard in hospital until she was charged.

The Church of Scientology, which includes actors Tom Cruise and John Travolta among its celebrity members, is against psychiatry and opposes the use of psychiatric drugs.

Posted by mikki at 12:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Boeing unveils first assembled 787 Dreamliner - CNN.com:


EVERETT, Washington (AP) -- Boeing has raised the curtain on its first fully assembled 787 to an audience of thousands who packed into its wide-body assembly plant for the plane's extravagantly orchestrated premiere.

An audience of thousands watched as Boeing Co. unveiled the 787 in Everett, Washington, on Sunday.»

With flight attendants onstage from each airline that has ordered the jet, the giant factory doors opened wide as the plane slowly moved into view to the strains of a theme song composed specially for the 787, which Boeing calls the Dreamliner.

"Our journey began some six years ago when we knew we were on the cusp of delivering valuable new technologies that would make an economic difference to our airline customers," Mike Bair, vice president and general manager of the 787 program, told the crowd.

Continue reading "Finally, a "greener" airliner" »

Posted by mikki at 09:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)