ARCHIVE – 2007

Parents in Brooklyn were threatened with a $300 fine by New York City because their six-year-old daughter drew a chalk flower on the family' front stoop. It seems a contender for the title of "world's worst neighbor" called the city on the family, claiming the flower -- soon washed away ...

DeSmogBlog is attempting to undercut a petition drive by Art Robinson's Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine by reporting that Dr. Frederick Seitz, lead signatory on the petition and a man in his 90s, allegedly was "quite elderly and not sufficiently rational" in 1989, so -- Richard implies -- he ...

The folks at Democratic Underground are encouraging each other to visit The National Center for Public Policy Research's new website covering SCHIP. We have a poll there asking the following: What should Congress do about SCHIP? Expand it Modify it somewhat, but not greatly Eliminate the program Not sure/no opinion ...

I now have the dubious, but hardly unique, distinction of being the subject of an error-filled essay by the New York Times' infamous Paul Krugman. Subject: The SCHIP/Graeme Frost affair and whether adults on public assistance have a right to withhold financial information about themselves from taxpayers. Krugman believes a ...

What is Al Gore's Nobel Peace Prize based upon? Peyton Knight takes a look: Al Gore's receipt of the increasingly politicized Nobel Peace Prize comes at a somewhat inconvenient time for the former vice president. British High Court Judge Michael Burton just scrutinized Mr. Gore's opus, "An Inconvenient Truth," and ...

Tom Blumer at Bizzy Blog says: How about we fix what’s broken in SCHIP and Medicaid before embarking headlong on an ill-advised expansion? President Bush was right to veto SCHIP; the minority in Congress will be right should they sustain it ...

Peyton Knight contributes this update: Tuesday, a congressional staff and media briefing titled "European Progress on Reducing Global Warming Emissions - A View from Italy of the Kyoto Protocol" was held on Capitol Hill.The guest speaker at the briefing was the Honorable Benedetto Della Vedova, a member of the Italian ...

Coalition Letter on the Clean Water Restoration Act October 9, 2007 The Honorable Nancy Pelosi Speaker of the U.S. House of Representative H-232, U.S. Capitol Washington, DC 20515 Dear Speaker Pelosi: A bill is now making its way through the House that would, according to one legal expert, push “the ...

Washington, D.C. - A letter signed by over 100 people representing diverse interests and millions of Americans is being delivered to Congress this morning contending that the Clean Water Restoration Act (CWRA) would achieve the opposite of what its sponsors claim. The bill, sponsored by James Oberstar in the House ...

A Freeper who goes by the nickname Icwhatudo has come up with evidence that the 12-year-old Baltimore child, Graeme Frost, who spoke for the nation's Democrats September 29 regarding his family's need for taxpayer-financed health insurance, goes to a private school that costs $20,000 per year. As does his sister ...

Sound writing questions why federal tax dollars should be spent to rebuild New Orleans, given the economics of the matter and the fact that all the spending still won't eliminate the city's unusually high vulnerability to destruction by storm. In recent years -- perhaps especially since Hurricane Andrew in Florida ...

Daniel Macintyre says: I've personally known grown men and women reduced to tears when facing the prospect of taking a sick or injured child to a military hospital......That is, of course, because socialized medicine, far from offering everyone the same treatment as it's proponents claim, ALWAYS treat those with rank ...

David Ridenour takes another look at the Law of the Sea Treaty, and still doesn’t like what he sees: Brutal assaults on pro-democracy demonstrators, the arrest of 700 Buddhist monks, the complete obliteration of at least 18 villages, the dragging of pro-democracy demonstrators from their beds at night and the ...

David Ridenour takes another look at the Law of the Sea Treaty, and still doesn’t like what he sees: Brutal assaults on pro-democracy demonstrators, the arrest of 700 Buddhist monks, the complete obliteration of at least 18 villages, the dragging of pro-democracy demonstrators from their beds at night and the ...

Washington, D.C. - Just as the Bush Administration has stepped up its human rights pressure on the Burmese ruling junta in light of that regime's brutal crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators, it is simultaneously taking a substantial step to increase the junta's influence over Americans, says the National Center for Public ...

A blogger called knobboy has criticized the National Center's paper, "SCHIP Expansion: Socialized Medicine on the Installment Plan," by citing this New York Times (by Philip M. Boffey, via Firedoglake) complaint: No one has the nerve to brand this country’s purest systems of 'socialized medicine' — the military and veterans ...

There's a new TV show in the fall network lineup that says a lot about where our culture is these days:  "Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?"   Agreeing to be a contestant on this latest must-see TV will say a lot about contestants before they even open their ...

A recent Congressional Black Caucus Foundation conference featured an "energy braintrust" that promised a lively three-hour discussion by oil company, association, government agency and university executives to "transform dialogue into action" and "bolster the relationships between the energy industry and African-American community." Sadly, session moderator Representative Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX) ...

An Open Letter to Bill Cosby On Clarence Thomas by Darryn "Dutch" Martin (bio) Dear Dr. Cosby: I've always been a huge fan of your work as an entertainer, philanthropist, family man and example of what can be accomplished with hard work, sacrifice and a love of learning. I supported ...

  Why Migrate South? by B.B. Robinson, Ph.D. (bio) Beginning with the end of the Civil War, huge numbers of newly-freed black Americans moved from the rural South to metropolitan areas - especially in northern states - in what is now called the "Great Migration." Lately, there is a trend ...