The NY Times editorial on port security today is enlightening. I’m not surprised at the failures and short-changing that is listed in this article - homeland security has clearly been a political issue since 9/11. From raising national threat levels whenever Bush’s polls drop to not requiring chemical facilities to improve security to resisting the […]

A friend of mine sent this to me. This is a serious subject that is getting attention but isn’t getting much help:
Dear Friends:
The twentieth century is familiar with Genocide: Armenian (1915-18, 1.5 million), Holocaust (1938-45, 6 million), Rwanda (1994, 800 thousand), Bosnia (1992-95, 200 thousand). Now, so is the twenty-first: Sudan (2005, 100 thousand—and climbing). […]

Check out the Feb. 27 cartoon:
http://www.uclick.com/client/nyt/tt/
Tom Toles strikes again.
~TST

From the NY Times:
“President Hosni Mubarak asked Egypt’s Parliament on Saturday to amend the Constitution to allow for direct, multiparty presidential elections this year for the first time in the nation’s history.”
Wow.
It is way too early to fully interpret Mubarak’s comments, but it seems that a democratic tide is sweeping throughout the Middle East. In […]

I am moving to Canada.
From the New York Times: “[The Canadian PM] Mr. Martin preferred to use his political capital in recent months defending same-sex marriage legislation rather than fighting elements of his party on the missile defense system.”
In what is being called a major departure from our past cooperation, Canada has signaled that it […]

Bush’s Privatization Plan has been out there for twenty-seven years. As this debate has evolved something has become shockingly clear: Conservatives have no plan to implement privatization. I don’t recall if it was Kos or Josh that pointed out that conservative think tanks have pushed privatization for decades, but never supplied a plan to make […]

NY Times piece on a medical malpractice attorney. It’s long, but when you get towards the end the insanity of Bush attacking medical malpractice is clear.
To Mr. Smith, the administration’s battle against medical malpractice lawyers is simple to explain. “It’s about politics and money; it’s not really about health care,” he said. “If you want […]

Clark Kent –
I agree with many of your factual points in your previous post, responding to a comment by Anonymous. I, for all the reasons you list, find it very difficult to take the position (as I see Anonymous doing) of apologizing for Palestinian terrorism and trying to judge defensive Israeli actions under the guise […]

My last entry provoked a rabid response from Mr. Anonymous, who apparently views my perception of the Arab-Israeli conflict as uneducated and naive. I have a suggstion for you, Mr. Anonymous: before you succumb to the propaganda espoused by the suddenly en vogue leftist-leaning apologists for Palestinian terror, study the situation more carefully. I welcome […]

The Pope is in the hospital for the second time in 2 weeks, making it even more likely that he will soon pass his position onto someone else–either by retiring or passing away. Now, I don’t want to be disrespectful of the the current Pope here, but I think it is time for a change.
In […]