F.D.A. Plans to Consider Morning-After Pill - New York Times

F.D.A. Plans to Consider Morning-After Pill - New York Times: "In a letter to Barr today, Dr. von Eschenbach indicated the F.D.A. would not approve Plan B for over-the-counter sale for girls under 18. “We believe that the appropriate age for OTC access is 18,” he wrote.

While the F.D.A. has insisted that its decisions to reject or delay the Plan B application were the result of scientific or regulatory concerns, a Congressional investigation found last year that top agency officials decided at one point to reject the application before its staff’s scientific review was even complete.

Dr. Susan Wood resigned in August as director of the F.D.A.’s office of women’s health to protest what she said was political interference in the agency’s scientific deliberations."

Statutes & Constitution :View Statutes :->2005->Ch0316->Section 130 : Online Sunshine

Statutes & Constitution :View Statutes :->2005->Ch0316->Section 130 : Online Sunshine: "(7) When traffic control signals are not in place or in operation, the driver of a vehicle shall yield the right-of-way, slowing down or stopping if need be to so yield, to a pedestrian crossing the roadway within a crosswalk when the pedestrian is upon the half of the roadway upon which the vehicle is traveling or when the pedestrian is approaching so closely from the opposite half of the roadway as to be in danger. Any pedestrian crossing a roadway at a point where a pedestrian tunnel or overhead pedestrian crossing"

Redrawing the College Map - New York Times

Redrawing the College Map - New York Times: "Consider Florida, whose overall population has doubled since 1980. With more than 57,000 students, Miami Dade College is the country’s largest degree-granting institution, after the University of Phoenix Online. Enrollment in the state university system has increased by more than 80,000 in 10 years, and 3 of its 11 palm-studded campuses have student bodies exceeding 40,000. The University of Florida at Gainesville enrolls 49,725 students, and admits roughly half its applicants.

“We had about 12,000 applications from children of alumni alone, and we only have space for 6,600” freshmen, says Janie M. Fouke, the provost. “So you have to turn them away, and they are flabbergasted. We have to get our message clear to help people understand that it is not going to be a slam dunk to getting people in here.”"

Reign of Error - New York Times

Reign of Error - New York Times: "Whatever the reason, the fact is that the Bush administration continues to be remarkably successful at rewriting history. For example, Mr. Bush has repeatedly suggested that the United States had to invade Iraq because Saddam wouldn’t let U.N. inspectors in. His most recent statement to that effect was only a few weeks ago. And he gets away with it. If there have been reports by major news organizations pointing out that that’s not at all what happened, I’ve missed them.

It’s all very Orwellian, of course. But when Orwell wrote of “a nightmare world in which the Leader, or some ruling clique, controls not only the future but the past,” he was thinking of totalitarian states. Who would have imagined that history would prove so easy to rewrite in a democratic nation with a free press?"

Charles William Daniel Company Archives

Charles William Daniel Company Archives: "Charles William Daniel Company Archives

Period (1815-) 1906-1992
Total size 5.02 m.
Consultation Not restricted
History

Founded in 1902, the company was named after its owner, Charles William Daniel, who determined its character to a very large degree; Daniel was born in Islington, London 1871; went to work at thirteen after his father died; held a job in the Walter Scott Publishing Company in the late 1890s, whose publications included the works of Lev Tolstoj, which greatly influenced him; started the C.W. Daniel Company Ltd. with the purpose of further propagating the ideas of the Russian writer; visited Tolstoj at Jasnaja Poljana in 1909; founder and editor of the magazine The Crank in 1904, later renamed The Open Road, a forum for Tolstojans, anarchists, pacifists and health food promoters; married Florence E. Worland in 1905; participated in anti-war propaganda in the First World War; condemned and imprisoned for the publication of pacifist pamphlets; the company published the works of authors like Mary Everest Boole, Michael Fraenkel, Emma Goldman, Stephen and Rosa Hobhouse, Søoren A. Kierkegaard, H. Valentine Knaggs, S.S. Koteliansky, D.H. Lawrence, José Ortega y Gasset, W.T. Symons and many others; he also published the periodicals The Healthy Life and Purpose, a literary journal in the 1930s; in 1941 the"

Inside Higher Ed :: Raising the Bar?

Inside Higher Ed :: Raising the Bar?: "One of the largest community college systems in the country is looking into creating an honors college with free tuition and fees for high-achieving high school students who are looking to transfer to competitive four-year institutions."

Into the Mountains of Kyrgyzstan - New York Times

Into the Mountains of Kyrgyzstan - New York Times: "“Chut!” Bakut yelled as he yanked the horse’s bridle. “Move!” His cries echoed off the mountains around us, a threatening desert landscape I’d only ever seen in Wile E. Coyote cartoons. But the horse would not budge; it had found a safe spot on the perilously steep and sandy slope, and was not coming down without a fight."

Into the Mountains of Kyrgyzstan - New York Times

Into the Mountains of Kyrgyzstan - New York Times: "“Chut!” Bakut yelled as he yanked the horse’s bridle. “Move!” His cries echoed off the mountains around us, a threatening desert landscape I’d only ever seen in Wile E. Coyote cartoons. But the horse would not budge; it had found a safe spot on the perilously steep and sandy slope, and was not coming down without a fight."

Daily Kos: College Graduates' Wages Drop 5.2% Since 2000

Daily Kos: College Graduates' Wages Drop 5.2% Since 2000: "Wage stagnation, long the bane of blue-collar workers, is now hitting people with bachelor's degrees for the first time in 30 years. Earnings for workers with four-year degrees fell 5.2 percent between 2000 and 2004 when adjusted for inflation, according to White House economists.


It is a setback for workers, and it may explain why surveys show that many Americans think President Bush has not managed the economy well.


Not since the 1970s have workers with bachelor's degrees seen a prolonged slump. These workers did well during the last period of growth, with average wages rising 12 percent from 1995 to 2000, according to an analysis by the Economic Policy Institute."

Cedar Key Chamber of Commerce - Boating and Fishing Information

Cedar Key Chamber of Commerce - Boating and Fishing Information

Cedar Key Chamber of Commerce - About Our Island

Cedar Key Chamber of Commerce - About Our Island

Krugman - NYT Web Journal

Krugman - NYT Web Journal: "It's things like that which make me doubt the sincerity of the Bush-Cheney administration when they claim to be crusaders for democracy and human rights. In practice, they always end up defending privilege. And even before 9/11, they were both promiscuous and selective about whom to call terrorists: to Cheney, the A.N.C. - which did pursue violent resistance, in which some innocent people were killed, but was remarkably restrained considering the situation - was a terrorist organization, while the apartheid regime, which relied on brutal re"

I.R.S. to Cut Tax Auditors - New York Times

I.R.S. to Cut Tax Auditors - New York Times: "The federal government is moving to eliminate the jobs of nearly half of the lawyers at the Internal Revenue Service who audit tax returns of some of the wealthiest Americans, specifically those who are subject to gift and estate taxes when they transfer parts of their fortunes to their children and others.

The administration plans to cut the jobs of 157 of the agency’s 345 estate tax lawyers, plus 17 support personnel, in less than 70 days. Kevin Brown, an I.R.S. deputy commissioner, confirmed the cuts after The New York Times was given internal documents by people inside the I.R.S. who oppose them."

Feeling Strains, Baptist Colleges Cut Church Ties - New York Times

Feeling Strains, Baptist Colleges Cut Church Ties - New York Times: "GEORGETOWN, Ky. — The request seemed simple enough to the Rev. Hershael W. York, then the president of the Kentucky Baptist Convention. He asked Georgetown College, a small Baptist liberal arts institution here, to consider hiring for its religion department someone who would teach a literal interpretation of the Bible.

But to William H. Crouch Jr., the president of Georgetown, it was among the last straws in a struggle that had involved issues like who could be on the board of trustees and whether the college encouraged enough freedom of inquiry to qualify for a chapter of Phi Beta Kappa."

Where Are Bush's Critics Now? - by Pat Buchanan

Where Are Bush's Critics Now? - by Pat Buchanan: "Where Are Bush's Critics Now?
by Patrick J. Buchanan

When Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert unleashed his navy and air force on Lebanon, accusing that tiny nation of an 'act of war,' the last pillar of Bush's Middle East policy collapsed.

First came capitulation on the Bush Doctrine, as Pyongyang and Tehran defied Bush's dictum: The world's worst regimes will not be allowed to acquire the world's worst weapons. Then came suspension of the democracy crusade as Islamic militants exploited free elections to advance to power and office in Egypt, Lebanon, Gaza, the West Bank, Iraq, and Iran.

Now Israel's rampage against a defenseless Lebanon – smashing airport runways, fuel tanks, power plants, gas stations, lighthouses, bridges, roads, and the occasional refugee convoy – has exposed Bush's folly in subcontracting U.S. policy out to Tel Aviv, thus making Israel the custodian of our reputation and interests in the Middle East."

Dodging Traffic and Pitfalls in Gourmet Georgia - New York Times

Dodging Traffic and Pitfalls in Gourmet Georgia - New York Times: "I came here to enjoy cheap but yummy food and wine, intellectual cafe society and sunny hospitality. Thanks to readers’ comments, I found what I was seeking almost immediately. I checked into the Hotel Charm (11 Chakhrukhadze Street, 995-32-985-333; www.hotelcharm.ge) an old house run by the friendly Ninidze family. My top-floor room, with sloping wooden ceilings and antique furniture, was $40 a night.

I had my first Georgian meal at Maidan (2 Mtkvari Right Bank, 995-32-751-188), a subterranean restaurant in Tbilisi’s atmospheric Old Town with arched, vaulted brick ceilings and comfortable pillows. The chakhapuli (goat stew with tarragon and sour plums) was fabulous. Along with a good glass of Teliani Valley wine, it cost 40 lari, or about $19 at 2.19 lari to the dollar. I was shocked to spend so much, but it would be the most I dropped on any meal all week.

My postprandial stroll took me down Shar"

The Plank

The Plank: "
A REVOLTING TRUTH:

Even by the degraded standards of everyday life in Baghdad, this report from CNN's Nic Robertson comes as a shock:

One international official told me of reports among his staff that a 15-year-old girl had been beheaded and a dog's head sewn on her body in its place; and of a young child who had had his hands drilled and bolted together before being killed.

From its gruesome particulars, the report goes on to describe the fear that has gripped even the most hardened Iraqis during this latest round of sectarian bloodletting. Robertson's dispatch points to a revolting truth about the war in Iraq--one that American officers discovered long ago, but which has yet to penetrate fully the imaginations of theoreticians writing from a distant remove. The fact is, there is very little that we can do to dampen the sectarian rage and pathologies tearing Iraq apart at the seams. Did the Army make a mistake when it banished 'counterinsurgency' from the lexicon of military affairs? Absolutely. Does it matter in Iraq? Probably not. How can you win over the heart and mind of someone who sews a dog's head on a girl? Would more U.S. troops alter Iraq's homicidal dynamic? Not really, given that, on the question of sectarian rage, America is now largely beside the point. True, U.S. troops can be--and have been--a vital buffer between Iraq's warrin"

The Fortuniana Rose and Fortuniana Roses

The Fortuniana Rose and Fortuniana Roses: "Jack and the Beanstalk, The Art of Fortuniana - By Eric C. Yount, Winter Park, Florida"
This guy knows what he's talking about, though I disagree with him about removing leaves during the spring pruning. I'll note that Leu Gardens, which has a top-notch rose garden (though the rose choices aren't terribly exotic) always removes all the leaves from all their roses. He also fails to mention the importance of mulch, though I'm certain he uses plenty of it.

Georgia Appeals Restraining Order on Voter Photo I.D.'s - New York Times

Georgia Appeals Restraining Order on Voter Photo I.D.'s - New York Times: "'We're pleased it's moving forward,'' Perdue spokesman Dan McLagan said of the appeal. ''We can't for the life of us understand why the Democrats have been so hellbent on making it easier for dead people, felons and illegal immigrants to cast ballots in their primary.''

The motion seeks to stay the temporary restraining order issued Friday by Fulton County Superior Court Judge Melvin Westmoreland.

In his sharply worded ruling, Westmoreland said the voter ID law ''unduly burdens the fundamental right to vote rather than regulate it'' and would cause ''irreparable harm.''"

Death trap - Sunday Times - Times Online

Death trap - Sunday Times - Times Online: "Not a single new dam, power station or water system has been built in the five years since the Taliban fell. Only one important highway has been completed. Kabul still has no sewerage system. Its streets remain piled high with rubbish and running with green effluent. Only 6% of the population has electricity and Afghanistan remains at the bottom of all social indicators."

Death trap - Sunday Times - Times Online

Death trap - Sunday Times - Times Online: "If there is one factor most responsible for the Taliban resurgence it is the war in Iraq, which distracted the attention of London and Washington at a critical time. While US marines were toppling statues of Saddam Hussein and then finding themselves fighting a bloody insurgency, the Taliban regrouped and retrained in Pakistan.

From just a few hundred guerrillas last year, Mullad Dadullah, the Taliban commander, now claims that he has 12,000 men under arms in the southern provinces of Kandahar, Helmand and Uruzgan."

Jefferson on Religion

Raising Kaine :: George Allen Is No Thomas Jefferson!: "Finally, the third and most important point: George Allen and Virginia's Statute of Religious Freedom do not mix. In fact, Thomas Jefferson believed strongly in religious freedom and separation of church and state. In 1800, he wrote, in reference to a group of clergy who hoped to create an official Christian Church for the United States:

The clergy...believe that any portion of power confided to me [as President] will be exerted in opposition to their schemes. And they believe rightly: for I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man. But this is all they have to fear from me: and enough, too, in their opinion.

In addition, Jefferson had this to say about people who try to bring Religion out of the realm of personal belief and into the public sphere:

Religion is a subject on which I have ever been most scrupulously reserved. I have considered it as a matter between every man and his Maker in which no other, and far less the public, had a right to intermeddle.

So how is Thomas Jefferson, a man who believed deeply that religion was a private matter that should be kept out of the public domain, like George Allen, one of the leading members of the religious right wing today? Let's put it this way, do "

TPMmuckraker July 6, 2006 01:21 PM

TPMmuckraker July 6, 2006 01:21 PM: "That said, the group never got their hands on any real weapons. In fact, they apparently trained by shooting paintball guns in the woods. During their raid of the group's Temple, a windowless warehouse, FBI agents found only one knife and a blackjack.

How did the group show up on the FBI's radar? It's unclear, but from the Miami Herald's reporting of the hearing, it sounds like the group's leader, Narseal Batiste, went down to his local 7-11 to 'obtain financial and military support.' I'm not kidding.

He eventually got a lot of promises from another FBI informant for guns, boots and $50,000 in cash. But the lawyer for one of Batiste's followers says Batiste, who used to 'roam the streets' in a bathrobe, was just scamming the informant because he was hard up for money."

Lady Liberty Trades In Some Trappings - New York Times

Lady Liberty Trades In Some Trappings - New York Times: "As the congregation of the World Overcomers Outreach Ministries Church looked on and its pastor, Apostle Alton R. Williams, presided, a brown shroud much like a burqa was pulled away to reveal a giant statue of the Lady, but with the Ten Commandments under one arm and 'Jehovah' inscribed on her crown.

And in place of a torch, she held aloft a large gold cross, as if to ward off the pawnshops, the car dealerships and the discount furniture outlets at the busy corner of Kirby Parkway and Winchester that is her home. A single tear graced her cheek."

Does the 1796-97 Treaty with Tripoli Matter to Church/State Separation?

Does the 1796-97 Treaty with Tripoli Matter to Church/State Separation?: "By Ed Buckner, Ph.D.

We freethinkers are, I suspect, sometimes suckers for the big lie that the U.S. really was founded as a Christian nation. We've heard it so often that we tend to doubt our allies who dispute it as maybe just over-zealous, over-eager, well-intentioned-but-wrong atheists out to prove what they want to believe rather than to understand the truth. I know I suspected something like that when I first read 'As the government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian Religion...' as a quote from the Treaty with Tripoli. And I know of at least one cynical atheist, Frederic Rice (with his own website full of information: http://www.linkline.com/personal/frice/).

Mr. Rice has even, in his profound ignorance, called me dishonest and urged me not to use the honorable label 'atheist' for talking about the treaty. But careful research into the facts, accompanied by honest presentation of those facts, leads to important support for the thesis that the Constitutional framers intended this nation to have a government strictly neutral regarding religion.

The pirates of the Barbary coast in general and of Tripoli (in what is now called Libya) in particular were destroying U.S. shipping and holding as prisoners U.S. seamen in the 1790s. It was a serious pro"

Daily Kos: First Time Diarist: It Can't Happen Here (updated)

Daily Kos: First Time Diarist: It Can't Happen Here (updated): "Sigh - again I point at Article XI of Treaty with Bey of Tripoli, signed in late 1796, ratified by the US Senate in 1797, with 7 members who had been in the House or Senate during the Congress that drafted the Bill of Rights. Adams made clear his desire for ratification of the Treaty, and there was a lot of coverage in contemporaneous news accounts, including of Article XI, which just so happens to read

As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion,-as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Musselmen,-and as the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.

So regardless of the expressions of the erectors of this monstrosity, they are WRONG on the history, totally misguided as to the intent of the F"

The Grave of Thomas Jefferson on Flickr - Photo Sharing!

The Grave of Thomas Jefferson on Flickr - Photo Sharing!

For Natural Dogs, a Growing Appetite - New York Times

For Natural Dogs, a Growing Appetite - New York Times: "Still, the national appetite for conventional hot dogs is waning. The amount of packaged hot dogs sold has dropped by more than 6 percent over the past four years, to 772.4 million pounds from 825.8 million pounds, according to a new report from ACNielsen, the market research company. (Figures don't include sales at Wal-Mart, which doesn't release such data.)

Hot dogs labeled organic, although still a tiny slice of the market, have boomed. During the same period, the number of pounds of organic dogs sold has increased 21 percent, to 1.2 million.

Stephen McDonnell, who founded the natural meat company Applegate Farms in 1987 and remains its chief executive, argues that the hot dog revolution should center on beef from animals that eat only pasture rather than the standard diet of grain. Beef from cattle raised on grass is leaner and has a healthier dose of omega-3 fatty acids, the kind found in fish like salmon and mackerel. As a result, he said, the dogs are healthier.

After working for a decade on the formula, Mr. McDonnell this month introduced low-priced nitrate-free hot dogs made with grass-fed beef from Uruguay."

With Jobs to Do, Louisiana Parish Turns to Inmates - New York Times

In-fucking-credible.... I must get out of the South.

With Jobs to Do, Louisiana Parish Turns to Inmates - New York Times: "Many people here in East Carroll Parish, as Louisiana counties are known, say they could not get by without their inmates, who make up more than 10 percent of its population and most of its labor force. They are dirt-cheap, sometimes free, always compliant, ever-ready and disposable.

You just call up the sheriff, and presto, inmates are headed your way. 'They bring me warm bodies, 10 warm bodies in the morning,' said Grady Brown, owner of the Panola Pepper Corporation. 'They do anything you ask them to do.'

It is an ideal arrangement, many in this farming parish say.

'You call them up, they drop them off, and they pick them up in the afternoon,' said Paul Chapple, owner of a service station.

National prison experts say that only Louisiana allows citizens to use inmate labor on such a widespread scale, under the supervision of local sheriffs. The state has the nation's highest incarceration rate, and East Carroll Parish, a forlorn jurisdiction of 8,700 people along the Mississippi River in the remote northeastern corner of Louisiana, has one of the highest rates in the state."

A Sweetener With a Bad Rap - New York Times

A Sweetener With a Bad Rap - New York Times: "July 2, 2006
A Sweetener With a Bad Rap
By MELANIE WARNER

EVERY time Marie Cabrera goes shopping, she brings along her mental checklist of things to avoid. It includes products with artery-clogging trans fats, cholesterol-inducing saturated fats, MSG and the bogeyman du jour, high-fructose corn syrup. That last one, she says, is the hardest to avoid unless she happens to be shopping in the small natural-foods section of her supermarket.

As she pushed her shopping cart down an aisle of the Super Stop & Shop near her hometown of Warren, R.I., recently, Ms. Cabrera, a retired schoolteacher, offered her thoughts on why she steers clear of high-fructose corn syrup: 'It's been linked to obesity, and it's just not something that's natural or good for you.'"

European Tribune - Community, Politics & Progress.

European Tribune - Community, Politics & Progress.: "For what it's worth, I once calculated 5% of fertile-age women are pregnant at any given time...

Assume 2 children per woman [replacement rate].
Assume 9 months of pregnancy per child [mild assumption]
Assume 30 years of fertile life [15 to 45]

2 pregnancies/woman * 9 months/pregnancy / 30 years/woman = 5%

Coincidentally, 30 years is also the length of the 24-54 age period. "

Airfare Predictions, Find Cheap Airline Tickets - Farecast

Airfare Predictions, Find Cheap Airline Tickets - Farecast

TPMmuckraker June 30, 2006 06:57 PM

TPMmuckraker June 30, 2006 06:57 PM: "Lowery Foundation Client Turned Earmarks into Fees, Reported Neither
By Paul Kiel - June 30, 2006, 6:57 PM

Yesterday, we reported that Copeland Lowery, the lobby shop under investigation for its very close relationship with Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-CA), had done some remarkably clumsy bookkeeping, failing to report around $2 million in lobbying fees."