RadioActive with Steve Mitton: November 2007

Thursday, November 29, 2007

Christmas vs. holiday

By RYAN J. FOLEY

"I am here today to voice the ire and frustration of the majority of people of the state of Wisconsin who want their Christmas tree back in the state Capitol, not a politically correct holiday tree," Schneider said, nearly shouting.
But Annie Laurie Gaylor of the Freedom From Religion Foundation said lawmakers shouldn't waste their time debating such trivial issues. Calling it a "Christmas" tree would offend nonreligious people and amount to a government endorsement of Christianity....

15 Weirdest Work Stories of 2007

1. “Employee eats 32 vending machine items for charity”

4. “Four women fired for gossiping”

7. “Carpenter free to ply trade in the nude”

12. “Workers killed after seeking raises”

Utah most depressed state in U.S.

By Kirstin Stewart

In 2004 and 2005, slightly more than 10 percent of adults and adolescents in Utah reported they had a major depressive episode.

In 2004, Utah reported 377 deaths by suicide. That number, adjusted for age and population, ranked it eighth worst in the nation, the report said. An average of 315 Utahns die by suicide each year.

Utah launched a five-year suicide prevention plan in May, an effort that focuses on raising awareness through ads and providing support groups.

Lawmakers last year also invested $2.7 million to treat mentally ill Utahns who are too poor to afford health insurance but earn too much to qualify for Medicaid.

Everything is Caused by Global Warming (600+ links)

Christopher Alleva

Agricultural land increase, Africa devastated, African aid threatened, Africa hit hardest, air pressure changes, Alaska reshaped, allergies increase, Alps melting, Amazon a desert, American dream end, amphibians breeding earlier (or not), ancient forests dramatically changed, animals head for the hills, Antarctic grass flourishes, anxiety, algal blooms, archaeological sites threatened, Arctic bogs melt, Arctic in bloom, Arctic lakes disappear, asthma, Atlantic less salty, Atlantic more salty, atmospheric defiance, atmospheric circulation modified, attack of the killer jellyfish, avalanches reduced, avalanches increased, bananas destroyed, bananas grow, beetle infestation, bet for $10,000, better beer, big melt faster, billion dollar research projects, billions of deaths, bird distributions change, bird visitors drop, birds return early, blackbirds stop singing, blizzards, blue mussels return,

Half of immigrants in Texas are......................

WASHINGTON — Half of the nearly 3.5 million immigrants living in Texas are in the country illegally, the Center for Immigration Studies says in a report being released today.
Based on the latest Census Bureau data, the report said Texas has one of the fastest-growing immigrant populations of any state. It said that 50 percent of the state's foreign-born population — slightly more than 1.7 million people — are illegal immigrants. Only Arizona at 65 percent, North Carolina at 58 percent and Georgia at 53 percent had a higher proportion of illegal immigrants.

Grandmother could face court

Grandmother Betty Davies has swept the street clean outside her house for the past 62 years without so much as raising an eyebrow.
The 88-year-old widow prides herself on keeping her front doorstep and pavement pristine.
But after one of her daily tidy-ups, a council worker knocked on the door of her home in Splott, Cardiff, to warn her she could be taken to court.
Mrs Davies was told she could be breaking litter laws and might be fined for brushing the leaves into the roadway.

Man Upset Over Child Support

Dwayne Allen Dail, who was wrongly convicted of rape and spent 18 years in prison, appeared in court Wednesday in a civil suit for back child support.
Dail is entitled to $360,000 in compensation from the state for the wrongful imprisonment. New DNA evidence set him free, but Dail now says he feels imprisoned by his son's mother.
Lorraine Michaels, the mother of Dail's son, filed the lawsuit. The suit seeks a "reasonable sum for the care and maintenance of the minor child" for the years Dail was in prison.

Statehood For Puerto Rico

SAN JUAN, PUERTO RICO -- A bill has been introduced to the U.S. Congress that could make Puerto Rico the 51st state. "We are U.S. citizens, we are a commonwealth of the U.S., but we are a nation sociologically. We call ourselves Puerto Ricans. We don't call ourselves Puerto Rican-Americans," Acevedo-Vila said.
Puerto Ricans do not currently pay taxes and do not vote for U.S. president, but they do receive welfare and unemployment benefits and pay Social Security. Puerto Ricans also serve in the U.S. military.

Edwards Weighs in on Universal Healthcare

"I'm mandating healthcare for every man woman and child in America and that's the only way to have real universal healthcare."

When asked by a reporter if an individual decided they didn't want healthcare Edwards quickly responded, "You don't get that choice."

A New Way to Control Weight?

By LEE DYE

When we sit, the researchers found, the enzymes that are responsible for burning fat just shut down.
This goes way beyond the common sense assumption that people who sit too much are less active and thus less able to keep their weight under control. It turns out that sitting for hours at a time, as so many of us do in these days of ubiquitous computers and electronic games and 24-hour television, attacks the body in ways that have not been well understood.

Monday, November 26, 2007

Secret Warrants Granted Without Probable Cause

By Ellen Nakashima

Federal officials are routinely asking courts to order cellphone companies to furnish real-time tracking data so they can pinpoint the whereabouts of drug traffickers, fugitives and other criminal suspects, according to judges and industry lawyers.
In some cases, judges have granted the requests without requiring the government to demonstrate that there is probable cause to believe that a crime is taking place....

67% Prefer Merry Christmas

As the holiday season begins, 67% of American adults like stores to use the phrase “Merry Christmas” in their seasonal advertising rather than “Happy Holidays.”

From a politically partisan perspective, 88% of Republicans prefer “Merry Christmas” while just 57% of Democrats favor the saying.

Speaking Up for Talk Radio

By Ken McIntyre

The mainstream media likes to brag about bringing us all the news that’s fit to print. Remember these recent stories?
Public schools in California next year will be required to teach 5-year-olds that homosexuality is normal and healthy — and that kids pick their "gender."
Television meteorologist John Coleman, who founded the Weather Channel, published a scathing article dismissing global warming as "the greatest scam in history."
Rocket and mortar attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq fell in October to the lowest level in 21 months, after peaking in June before the "surge" in forces got under way.
Draw a blank? It could be because the mainstream media mostly ignored these stories, or briefed them on page A13. To hear about them, you likely had to rely on talk radio.
Buried speech isn’t free.

Poll says Chavez loses Venezuela referendum lead

By Enrique Andres Pretel

CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has lost his lead eight days before a referendum on ending his term limit, an independent pollster said on Saturday, in a swing in voter sentiment against the Cuba ally.
Forty-nine percent of likely voters oppose Chavez's proposed raft of constitutional changes to expand his powers,

Mankind 'shortening the universe's life'

By Roger Highfield

New Scientist reports a worrying new variant as the cosmologists claim that astronomers may have provided evidence that the universe may ultimately decay by observing dark energy, a mysterious anti gravity force which is thought to be speeding up the expansion of the cosmos.
The damaging allegations are made by Profs Lawrence Krauss of Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, and James Dent of Vanderbilt University, Nashville, who suggest that by making this observation in 1998 we may have determined that the cosmos is in a state when it was more likely to end.

Disabled veterans jeered at swimming pool

By Thomas Harding, Lucy Cockcroft and Brendan Carlin

Injured soldiers who lost their limbs fighting for their country have been driven from a swimming pool training session by jeering members of the public.
The men, injured during tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, were taking part in a rehabilitation session at a leisure centre, when two women demanded they be removed from the pool. They claimed that the soldiers "hadn't paid" and might scare the children.
The incident has sparked widespread condemnation. Adml Lord Boyce, a former head of the Armed Forces, said last night the women should be "named and shamed".

Does perfection have its price for Romney?

By Faye Fiore

MANCHESTER, N.H. -- Mitt Romney arrives at his campaign headquarters here 10 minutes early, a knife-blade crease in his khakis, winter tan, lots of hair, all of it in place. He skips the coffee and doughnuts in favor of skim milk and the home-baked granola sent along in a zip-lock baggie by his wife. That's Ann, his high school sweetheart -- the mother of his five handsome sons -- with whom he says he has never had a serious argument in 38 years of marriage.By central-casting standards, the former Massachusetts governor is the perfect presidential specimen

Romney and Giuliani Turn Negative in N.H.

The rhetorical volleys underscored the growing stakes here in New Hampshire, where Romney leads in the polls but Giuliani now believes he has a chance to derail the former Massachusetts governor's campaign before it can build the kind of momentum that could make him unstoppable. Leading in national polls, Giuliani had long appeared to be playing down the importance of early-voting states such as Iowa and New Hampshire in favor of the bigger states....

Huckabee, the False Conservative

By Robert Novak

WASHINGTON -- Who would respond to criticism from the Club for Growth by calling the conservative, free-market campaign organization the "Club for Greed"? That sounds like Howard Dean, Dennis Kucinich or John Edwards, all Democrats preaching the class struggle. In fact, the rejoinder comes from Mike Huckabee, who has broken out of the pack of second-tier Republican presidential candidates to become a serious contender -- definitely in Iowa and perhaps nationally.

Iraqis may offer US deal to stay longer

By QASSIM ABDUL-ZAHRA

BAGHDAD -- Iraq's government, seeking protection against foreign threats and internal coups, will offer the U.S. a long-term troop presence in Iraq in return for U.S. security guarantees as part of a strategic partnership, two Iraqi officials said Monday.

Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Garcias Are Catching Up With Joneses

Step aside Moore and Taylor. Welcome Garcia and Rodriguez.
Smith remains the most common surname in the United States, according to a new analysis released yesterday by the Census Bureau. But for the first time, two Hispanic surnames — Garcia and Rodriguez — are among the top 10 most common in the nation, and Martinez nearly edged out Wilson for 10th place.
The number of Hispanics living in the United States grew by 58 percent in the 1990s to nearly 13 percent of the total population, and cracking the list of top 10 names suggests just how pervasively the Latino migration has permeated everyday American culture.

All in a Good Cause

By Orson Scott Card

Here's a story you haven't heard, and you should have.An intelligence source, working for a government agency. He's not a spy, he's an analyst. He uses computers to crunch numbers and at the end of his work, out pops the truth that was hiding in the original data. Let's call him "Mann."The trouble with Mann is, he has an ideology. He knows what he wants his results to be. And the original numbers aren't giving him that data. So the agency he works for won't be able to persuade people to fight the war he wants to fight.Well, that's not acceptable.

Where`s the Beef?

By Timothy Birdnow

In the mid 1980`s the Wendy's Hamburger chain ran an attention-grabbing advertising campaign in which an octogenarian (who sounded amazingly like Helen Thomas) bellyached about the stingy amount of meat on her sandwich; "where`s the beef?" became a nationally known slogan, and embodied the prosperity of our nation. We were red blooded Americans, by God, proud and vigorous, with hearty appetites for red blooded all American beef!

Blaming Americans again

Timothy Birdnow

Liberals are using the concept of Anthropogenic Global Warming to advance their favorite causes, and that the whole War of the Worlds AGW scare is a tool to that end. This piece in LiveScience.com certainly buttresses that opinion. The Left has traditionally hated Americans eating red meat and driving their cars, and now we are told that, in order to ``save the planet`` we should eschew both! This from the article:
In a little-noticed scientific paper in 2005, Paul Higgins, a scientist and policy fellow with the American Meteorological Society, calculated specific savings from adopting federal government recommendations for half an hour a day of exercise instead of driving.

CBS' BOGUS VET-SUICIDE STATS

By MICHAEL FUMENTO

November 19, 2007 -- THERE'S "startling" and "stunning" news of a "hidden epidemic" of veteran suicides. So claimed CBS News in two reports last week.
Most of the airtime went for heart-rending interviews with wives of vets who had killed themselves. But CBS also provided statistics that it said showed that "veterans were more than twice as likely to commit suicide in 2005 than non-vets."

Did Mitt Romney Push Poll Himself?

By Mark Hemingway

Editor's update: The Romney campaign responds to this piece here.

TargetPoint Consulting responds here.

News broke Thursday that voters in New Hampshire and Iowa had received phone calls from pollsters raising questions about aspects of Republican Mitt Romney’s Mormon faith. Who made the calls? Although the Romney campaign denies involvement, evidence points in its general direction. The anti-Mormon calls are part of a highly unethical but not uncommon political campaign tactic known as push polling.

Philadelphia Gives Boy Scouts Ultimatum

By Dafna Linzer

PHILADELPHIA -- This may be the last free Thanksgiving dinner for the Boy Scouts of Philadelphia.

Citing a local 1982 "fair practices" law, the city solicitor has given the Scouts until Dec. 3 to renounce its policy of excluding homosexuals or forfeit the grand, Beaux-Arts building it has rented from the city for $1 a year since 1928.
"While we respect the right of the Boy Scouts to prohibit participation in its activities by homosexuals," the solicitor, Romulo Diaz, said last week in an interview, "we will not subsidize that discrimination by passing on the costs to the people of Philadelphia."

The end of a sane society?

By Kelly Boggs

ALEXANDRIA, La. (BP)--The Court of Appeals for the U.S. Ninth Circuit upheld this summer an Oakland, Calif., city government declaration that the phrase "marriage is the foundation of the natural family and sustains family values" was inflammatory and promoted harassment based on so-called sexual orientation. The phrase was also deemed to be homophobic and disruptive.

'Global warming' shocker

As a result of his shocking initial findings that temperature monitoring stations were constructed and placed without regard to achieving accurate recordings of natural temperatures, Anthony Watts set out to investigate the facilities used by NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
What he found were temperature stations with sensors on the roofs of buildings, near air-conditioning exhaust vents, in parking lots near hot automobiles, barbecues, chimneys and on pavement and concrete surfaces – all of which would lead to higher temperature recordings than properly established conditions.

Battle-scarred 'sub' in L.A. barrios speaks out

By Migdia Chinea

Hi, my name is Migdia Chinea and I'm a recovering LAUSD "substitute."
Oh, I'm also UCLA-educated with honors, refined, empathetic, college-level Spanish fluent and a Googleable professional screenwriter.
To make ends meet during hard economic times, I became a "substitute teacher" for the Los Angeles Unified School District, or LAUSD – or to put it more kindly, a "guest teacher." As a guest LAUSD teacher I thought I would be an asset, but the system has never appreciated nor taken advantage of my educational or professional hard-earned accomplishments.
There's no teaching going on at LAUSD – only confinement of the sort one may find in a penal colony, complete with walkie-talkie-carrying wardens and bullhorns.....

CARDINAL ATTACKS LESBIAN

The role of fathers would be "radically undermined" by legislation aimed at making it easier for lesbian couples to become parents through fertility treatment, the most senior Roman Catholic clergyman in England and Wales has warned.
Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor expressed strong opposition to the proposed legislation contained in the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill to be debated in the House of Lords.

Palestinians have backtracked

The Palestinians have backtracked on all understandings that were reached on a joint Israeli-Palestinian statement to be presented at the Annapolis peace conference, senior diplomatic officials were quoted as saying Sunday.
According to the sources, the Palestinians have "returned to square one, to [a point that] preceded the beginning of the negotiations."

Dire Warming Forecast

By ARTHUR MAX

VALENCIA, Spain (AP) - Global warming is "unequivocal" and carbon dioxide already in the atmosphere commits the world to an eventual rise in sea levels of up to 4.6 feet, the world's top climate experts warned Saturday in their most authoritative report to date.
"Only urgent, global action will do," said U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, calling on the United States and China - the world's two biggest polluters - to do more to slow global climate change.

A world dying

Humanity is rapidly turning the seas acid through the same pollution that causes global warming, the world's governments and top scientists agreed yesterday. The process – thought to be the most profound change in the chemistry of the oceans for 20 million years – is expected both to disrupt the entire web of life of the oceans and to make climate change worse.

Wednesday, November 14, 2007

'My Space' hoax ends with suicide

His name was Josh Evans. He was 16 years old. And he was hot."Mom! Mom! Mom! Look at him!" Tina Meier recalls her daughter saying.Josh had contacted Megan Meier through her MySpace page and wanted to be added as a friend.Yes, he's cute, Tina Meier told her daughter. "Do you know who he is?""No, but look at him! He's hot! Please, please, can I add him?"

Reservations About Mormonism

By Martin Frost

One of my recent columns discussed the role of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's Mormon faith in his campaign. My column pointed out that some people could not vote for Romney because of his religion and I asked readers who felt this way to explain their position.
I received more than 400 emails in response to this column and have now read all of them. Let me start by saying that a majority of the people responding to my column took the position that a candidate’s religion should not be a factor in whether or not he is elected.

Protesters try to block trains at Port

Activists protesting military shipments at the Port of Olympia poured cement over railroad tracks to try to block shipments coming out of the Port today, according to Olympia police.
Nobody was arrested after protesters unsuccessfully tried to keep trains from leaving the Port, said Olympia police Lt. Jim Costa. The Port cleaned up the cement, Costa said.
Protesters are a frequent presence at that location, where Iraq-bound Army equipment goes through the Port.

The war on Thanksgiving

By Michelle Malkin

Dear Seattle Public Schools Staff:
We recognize the amount of work that educators and staff have to do in order to fulfill our mission to successfully educate all students. It’s never as simple as preparing and delivering a lesson. Students bring with them a host of complexities including cultural, linguistic and social economic diversity. In addition they can also bring challenges related to their social, emotional and physical well being. One of our departments’ goals is to support you by suggesting ways to assist you in removing barriers to learning by promoting respect and honoring the diversity of our students, staff and families.

Myth #11: Thanksgiving is a happy time

Fact: For many Indian people, “Thanksgiving” is a time of mourning, of remembering how a gift of generosity was rewarded by theft of land and seed corn, extermination of many from disease and gun, and near total destruction of many more from forced assimilation. As currently celebrated in this country, “Thanksgiving” is a bitter reminder of 500 years of betrayal returned for friendship.

“The First Thanksgiving”

by Judy Dow (Abenaki) and Beverly Slapin

Why has it become an annual elementary school tradition to hold Thanksgiving pageants, with young children dressing up in paper-bag costumes and feather-duster headdresses and marching around the schoolyard? Why is it seen as necessary for fake “pilgrims” and fake “Indians” (portrayed by real children, many of whom are Indian) to sit down every year to a fake feast, acting out fake scenarios and reciting fake dialogue about friendship? And why do teachers all over the country continue (for the most part, unknowingly) to perpetuate this myth year after year after year?

ELIOT PUTS THE BRAKES ON LICENSE PLAN

By KENNETH LOVETT

November 14, 2007 -- ALBANY - With his poll numbers collapsing, Gov. Spitzer pullled the plug today on his controversial plan to allow illegal immigrants to obtain driver's licenses.
"I have concluded that New York state cannot successfully address this problem on its own," Spitzer said at a news conference after meeting with members of the state's congressional delegation. "I am withdrawing my proposal."

Universities' Growing Liberal Bias Is Documented

"Universities are tilting to the left, and it starts at the student level and goes all the way through to the hiring level and even to the promotion level," the vice president and director of the National Research Initiative at AEI, Henry Olsen, said. "This is a real problem, not anecdote masquerading as fact."

New technique creates cheap, abundant hydrogen

The technology offers a way to cheaply and efficiently generate hydrogen gas from readily available and renewable biomass such as cellulose or glucose, and could be used for powering vehicles, making fertilizer and treating drinking water.

UN official warns of ignoring warming

By ARTHUR MAX

VALENCIA, Spain - The U.N.'s top climate official warned policymakers and scientists trying to hammer out a landmark report on climate change that ignoring the urgency of global warming would be "criminally irresponsible." Environmentalists and authors of the report expected tense discussions on what to include and leave out of the document, which is a synthesis of thousands of scientific papers.

"Income inequality"

The study, to be released today, is a careful, detailed piece of research by professional economists that avoids political judgments. But what it does do is show beyond doubt that the U.S. remains a dynamic society marked by rapid and mostly upward income mobility. Much as they always have, Americans on the bottom rungs of the economic ladder continue to climb into the middle and sometimes upper classes in remarkably short periods of time.

Ahmadinejad: Nuclear Critics Are 'Traitors'

TEHRAN, Iran — Iran's hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Monday blasted critics of his nuclear policies as "traitors" and accused them of spying for Iran's enemies, using his strongest rhetoric yet against domestic opponents and raising concerns of a possible crackdown.

UN Panel's Global Warming Report May Win U.S. Support

By Alex Morales

Nov. 12 (Bloomberg) -- American officials are planning to back a new United Nations document that says governments and businesses will have to spend billions of dollars a year to reduce global warming and adapt to its effects.

The report will be discussed this week at a meeting of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC.

Global Temperatures 2500 B.C. to 2007 A.D.

Clinton planted questions

BY MICHAEL McAULIFF and CELESTE KATZ

John Edwards ripped Hillary Clinton Saturday for planting questions at campaign events, saying it's the kind of thing George Bush does.
Clinton's team admitted Friday to asking a Grinnell College student to pose a question about global warming during a recent Iowa campaign stop.

Privacy no longer can mean anonymity

PAMELA HESS

(AP) - WASHINGTON-As Congress debates new rules for government eavesdropping, a top intelligence official says it is time that people in the United States changed their definition of privacy.
Privacy no longer can mean anonymity, says Donald Kerr, the principal deputy director of national intelligence. Instead, it should mean that government and businesses properly safeguard people's private communications and financial information.

Rich must bear climate change costs

By Jeremy Lovell

LONDON, Nov 12 (Reuters) - The rich caused the problem and must therefore pay the price of fixing the global climate change crisis, a new report said on Monday. Christian Aid, an agency of British and Irish churches, said industrialised nations were historically responsible and therefore morally liable to foot the multi-billion dollar cost of tackling the problem of man-made emissions of carbon gases.

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