But a number of cases that are likely to reach the court in the next few years, including the latest versions of the ban on the procedure that critics call partial-birth abortion, may give a new set of justices the opportunity to restrict abortion in significant ways.” (New York Times )

‘I think it would be very tempting if the president said to Justice O’Connor, ‘You could help the country now,’ ‘ Mr. Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania and a pivotal player in any confirmation hearings, said in an interview on the CBS program ‘Face the Nation.’ ‘She has received so much adulation that a confirmation proceeding would be more like a coronation, and she might be willing to stay on for a year or so.’

Although Mr. Specter’s seeming endorsement of the idea was highly speculative – Justice O’Connor, 75, has announced her retirement, while Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, 80, has not stepped down – it was the clearest of his several recent signals that he plans to steer his own course as he oversees hearings on a replacement for Justice O’Connor, independent of the president and of his party’s conservative base.” (New York Times )

A police source told The Times: “Our main fear is that this group is out there still sitting on a cache of high explosives knowing that their bomb designs worked.” (Times of London)

Being abused as an infant outweighs any primarily genetic trait, such as an anxious temperament, in fostering abusive parenting by female monkeys, says primatologist Dario Maestripieri of the University of Chicago.” (Science News)

At the same time, approximately one-fifth (22%) of adults believe ‘human beings evolved from earlier species’ (evolution) and 10 percent subscribe to the theory that ‘human beings are so complex that they required a powerful force or intelligent being to help create them’ (intelligent design). Moreover, a majority (55%) believe that all three of these theories should be taught in public schools, while 23 percent support teaching creationism only, 12 percent evolution only, and four percent intelligent design only.

These are some of the results of a nationwide Harris Poll of 1,000 U.S. adults surveyed by telephone by Harris Interactive® between June 17 and 21, 2005.” (Yahoo! News)

Self-styled Taliban spokesman Mullah Abdul Latif Hakimi told AFP the soldier was killed on Saturday and his body was left on a mountainside in the northeastern province of Kunar.

An American navy SEAL has been missing in Kunar after the rescue attempt of a four-man team ended in the downing of a US military helicopter on June 28, killing 16 people. One soldier was rescued but the other two are dead.” (Agence France-Presse)

And it’s no use Mr Blair telling us yesterday that ‘they will never succeed in destroying what we hold dear’. ‘They’ are not trying to destroy ‘what we hold dear’. They are trying to get public opinion to force Blair to withdraw from Iraq, from his alliance with the United States, and from his adherence to Bush’s policies in the Middle East. The Spanish paid the price for their support for Bush – and Spain’s subsequent retreat from Iraq proved that the Madrid bombings achieved their objectives – while the Australians were made to suffer in Bali.” — Robert Fisk (Independent.UK)

The three bombs went off nearly simultaneously at about 8:50 a.m. Thursday, said Deputy Assistant Commissioner Brian Paddick said, revising earlier accounts that they occurred within a 26-minute span. An explosion tore through a double-decker bus nearly an hour later.

New information about the timing of the explosions also suggested they were detonated with synchronized timers rather than by suicide bombers, although officials said nothing had been ruled out.” (New York Times )

‘The Red Planet is about to be spectacular.’

‘Earth is catching up with Mars [for] the closest approach between the two planets in recorded history.’

‘On August 27th … Mars will look as large as the full moon.’

And finally, ‘NO ONE ALIVE TODAY WILL EVER SEE THIS AGAIN.’

Those are snippets from a widely-circulated email. Only the first sentence is true. The Red Planet is about to be spectacular. The rest is a hoax.

Here are the facts: Earth and Mars are converging for a close encounter this year on October 30th at 0319 Universal Time. Distance: 69 million kilometers. To the unaided eye, Mars will look like a bright red star, a pinprick of light, certainly not as wide as the full Moon.

Disappointed? Don’t be. If Mars did come close enough to rival the Moon, its gravity would alter Earth’s orbit and raise terrible tides.

Sixty-nine million km is good. At that distance, Mars shines brighter than anything else in the sky except the Sun, the Moon and Venus. The visual magnitude of Mars on Oct. 30, 2005, will be -2.3. Even inattentive sky watchers will notice it, rising at sundown and soaring overhead at midnight.” (NASA)

It was one of the last entries in his Web log before he was arrested Saturday and then charged this week with two counts of kidnapping.” (New York Times )

…For the past several Sundays, the New Born Fellowship Christian Center in Rochester has conducted spiritual warfare. The congregation has been encouraged to wear fatigues and uniforms. Assistant Pastor Perdita Meeks said no one has found spiritual warfare to be over the top.” (WHAM-TV, Rochester NY via Uncle $cam)

Nevertheless, when I spotted Robertson in a lineup of celebrities including Brad Pitt, Bono, George Clooney and the also-never-boring Dennis Hopper, I was delighted to see him. He was in the One Campaign’s television ad asking for help in the crusade against poverty, starvation and AIDS in Africa and elsewhere.

In the commercial, Robertson says, ‘Americans have an unprecedented opportunity,’ and then Sean ‘P. Diddy’ Combs, of all people, finishes his sentence, concluding that ‘we can make history.’

On a recent ‘Nightline,’ Robertson showed up with his new best friend, Clooney. When asked if his group Operation Blessing would promote ‘the responsible use of condoms’ along with abstinence in its AIDS education program in Africa, Robertson answered, ‘Absolutely.’ Pat Robertson!” — Sarah Vowell (New York Times op-ed)

But, in fact, the living world is shot through with imperfection. Unless one wants to attribute either incompetence or sheer malevolence to such a designer, this imperfection — the manifold design flaws of life — points incontrovertibly to a natural, rather than a divine, process, one in which living things were not created de novo, but evolved. Consider the human body. Ask yourself, if you were designing the optimum exit for a fetus, would you engineer a route that passes through the narrow confines of the pelvic bones?” (LA Times op-ed)

Police and firefighters were called to a building site in south east London, after a passer-by spotted the girl.

The unnamed 15-year-old had apparently left her home near the site, climbed the crane and walked across a narrow beam while remaining fast asleep.” (BBC)

Demonstrators fought running battles with 1,000 police in the centre of the city, which was brought to a standstill for six hours.”

Over the last few years, Leo Stoller has written dozens of letters to companies and organizations and individuals stating that he owns the trademark to ‘stealth.’ He has threatened to sue people who have used the word without his permission. In some cases, he has offered to drop objections in exchange for thousands of dollars. And in a few of those instances, people or companies have paid up.

‘If a trademark owner doesn’t go up to the plate each day and police his mark, he will be overrun by third-party infringers,’ Mr. Stoller, a 59-year-old entrepreneur, said in a telephone interview from his office in Chicago. ‘We sue a lot of companies.’

Mr. Stoller owns and runs a company called Rentamark.com, which offers, among other things, advice on sending cease-and-desist letters and Mr. Stoller’s services as an expert witness in trademark trials. Through Rentamark, Mr. Stoller offers licensing agreements for other words he says he owns and controls, such as bootlegger, hoax and chutzpah, and sells t-shirts and other merchandise through what the Web site calls its ‘stealth mall.’

He is currently in a legal dispute with Sony’s Columbia Pictures unit over a film that opens late this month. It is about elite Navy pilots and titled – what else? – Stealth.” (New York Times )

Scientists and engineers jumped in the air, pumped their fists and hugged one another. Not only had their mission to deliberately collide with a comet for the first time succeeded perfectly, but the prospect of a damp squib – with the impactor passing right through a diffuse, rubbly comet – had fizzled away.” (New Scientist )

Channing Phillips, spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s office in Washington, declined comment on whether any materials were seized in Friday’s raids, saying that the search warrants were under seal.

The Internal Revenue Service, the Pentagon’s Defense Criminal Investigative Service and the FBI have joined the U.S. Attorney’s office in the investigation of Cunningham and Mitchell Wade, who until recently was chief executive of MZM, a Washington-based government contractor that provides highly classified intelligence work for the Pentagon.

The investigation began after news reports that Wade had purchased Cunningham’s home in Del Mar, California, in late 2003 for more than $1.6 million and then sold it months later at a loss of $700,000. Cunningham also was living rent-free on Wade’s boat at the Capital Yacht Club on the Potomac River.” (New York Times )

Late last week, a delegation of conservative lawyers led by C. Boyden Gray and former Attorney General Edwin Meese III met with the White House chief of staff, Andrew H. Card Jr., to warn that appointing Mr. Gonzales would splinter conservative support.

And Paul M. Weyrich, a veteran conservative organizer and chairman of the Free Congress Foundation, said he had told administration officials that nominating Mr. Gonzales, whose views on abortion are considered suspect by religious conservatives, would fracture the president’s conservative backers.

The groundswell of opposition to Mr. Gonzales was just one sign of the conflicting forces suddenly swirling around Mr. Bush this weekend as he headed to Camp David to begin considering a replacement for Justice O’Connor, a decision his aides said would not be announced before he returned from a trip to Europe at the end of next week.

Senate Democrats demanded that he consult them before making a choice and appoint a pragmatist in Justice O’Connor’s mold.

Conservatives, flexing their muscles in a battle they have spent a decade preparing for, described the nomination as a test of Mr. Bush’s convictions and past promises, and his biggest opportunity yet to assure that the Bush presidency will leave a conservative stamp for a generation to come.” (New York Times )

If you are a lawyer with a case at the court, pitch your arguments to her. If your issue is affirmative action, or religion, or federalism, or redistricting, or abortion, or constitutional due process in any of its many manifestations, you can assume that the fate of that issue is in her hands. Don’t bother with doctrinaire assertions and bright-line rules. Be meticulously prepared on the facts, and be ready to show how the law relates to those facts and how, together, they make sense.

And it is because Justice O’Connor has played such a pivotal role on the court for much of her 24-year tenure that her unexpected retirement is such a galvanizing event. Much more than the widely anticipated retirement of the predictably conservative Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, her departure creates an opportunity for President Bush to shape the court.”

What Congel has in mind is an outsize and extremely unusual mega-mall. Destiny U.S.A., the retail-and-entertainment complex he is building in upstate New York, aspires to be not only the biggest man-made structure on the planet but also the most environmentally friendly. Equal parts Disney World, Las Vegas, Bell Laboratories and Mall of America — with a splash of Walden Pond — the ”retail city” will include the usual shops and restaurants as well as an extensive research facility for testing advanced technologies and a 200-acre recreational biosphere complete with springlike temperatures and an artificial river for kayaking.” (New York Times )

Jacques Audiard’s film The Beat That My Heart Skipped, which relocates Mr. Toback’s violent, willfully unstable psychodrama from 70’s New York to 21st-century Paris, has to be one of the unlikeliest remakes in the history of the movies, and not only because The Beat That My Heart Skipped, which opened Friday in New York and Los Angeles, is actually a strong picture in its own right. It’s also unusual in that the original film is not the sort of proven, marketable commodity that generally inspires (if that’s the word) the urge to remake: Fingers was a box-office flop in the United States, and although it attracted some critical enthusiasm in France, it quickly, Mr. Audiard says, ‘fell into a kind of purgatory’ – largely forgotten and rarely revived. And it’s practically unheard of for a French filmmaker to redo an American movie. Even the auteurs of the French New Wave maintained a reverential, hands-off attitude toward the work of their Hollywood idols; they contented themselves with homages, fleeting evocations of the manner, rather than the matter, of the movies they loved.” (New York Times )

Channing Phillips, spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s office in Washington, declined comment on whether any materials were seized in Friday’s raids, saying that the search warrants were under seal.

The Internal Revenue Service, the Pentagon’s Defense Criminal Investigative Service and the FBI have joined the U.S. Attorney’s office in the investigation of Cunningham and Mitchell Wade, who until recently was chief executive of MZM, a Washington-based government contractor that provides highly classified intelligence work for the Pentagon.

The investigation began after news reports that Wade had purchased Cunningham’s home in Del Mar, California, in late 2003 for more than $1.6 million and then sold it months later at a loss of $700,000. Cunningham also was living rent-free on Wade’s boat at the Capital Yacht Club on the Potomac River.” (New York Times )

They call it the Junk Fax Prevention Act, but as you can see from the bill text and testimony at the link at the bottom of this page, it will do just the opposite… it will legalize the sending of junk faxes from qualifying advertisers.

The way they are doing this is to allow unlimited faxing of ads (until you get sick enough of it to complain and your complaint meets certain requirements) if you have an ‘Existing Business Relationship,’ but the definition of an EBR is so loose that it will be trivial for junk faxers to establish an EBR with virtually any business or consumer. A spammer can establish an EBR with your company just by visiting your website, calling your phone, or sending an email (provided someone replies, even an auto-responder). That gives them the right to LEGALLY send advertising to your fax machine.

Not only that, the current bill creates a never-ending EBR, so they can junkfax you forever until you opt out. So someone who spoke with you 20 years ago can legally send you junk faxes as soon as this bill passes. And, like spam, once you’ve opted out, you’ve just proven that it’s a real fax number and you look at your faxes…now your number is more valuable to sell to others.” (The J-Walk Blog )

The printing is large and easy to read from a distance. The cards are tabbed and arranged by topic, so you can find the right message fast.

The book includes a variety of uncensored and censored messages (for those with slightly smaller balls). We’ve included a message for just about every annoying driver you’ll encounter (43 messages in all), and we’ve also included some blank pages for you to write your own messages!”

A road rager can become upset because you accidentally cut in front of him or her, or other reasons that were not intentional. A key factor in reversing the process is an apology. Over 85 percent of road ragers said that they would drop the matter if the other ‘careless’ driver simply apologized. Instead, road ragers claim, the ‘careless’ driver seems to be unconcerned about what they just did and, therefore, needs to be taught a lesson. In a car, only one method is effective in conveying an apology: A sign.”

This 4th of July is payback time. For the first time in history, Earth gets to strike back. The weapon: a NASA spacecraft named Deep Impact. The target: a 10-mile wide comet named Tempel 1.

Deep Impact is going to shoot an 820-pound projectile into the rocky, icy nucleus of Comet Tempel 1. The 23,000 mph collision will form a big crater, and Deep impact will observe the stages of its development, how deep it gets and how wide it becomes. Researchers expect a plume of gas and dust to spray out of the crater. Deep Impact will measure its composition and record what the billowing plume does to the comet’s atmosphere. In all, Deep Impact should be able to peer into the new crater for almost 15 minutes before the craft speeds away, continuing, like its cometary quarry, to orbit forever around the Sun.” (NASA)

We’ve launched an urgent petition to take your voice straight to your senators in this critical time to show Congress, the president and the media that the American people are engaged and ready to fight for our rights. Please sign today.” (MoveOn)

But the Church of S*c*i*e*n*t*o*l*o*g*y’s war on psychiatry is no joke. For decades, s*c*i*e*n*t*o*l*o*g*ists have maintained that the very notion of mental illness is a fraud. They base this belief on the views of s*c*i*e*n*t*o*l*o*g*y founder L. Ron Hubbard, who proclaimed that psychiatry was an evil enterprise, a form of terrorism, and the cause of crime. Now, they’re attempting to enshrine their contempt for psychiatry in laws across the country. This is the last in a four-part series chronicling the suddenly higher profile of the Church of S*c*i*e*n*t*o*l*o*g*y.” (Salon)

There was nothing inconsistent to reconcile. It really did all make perfect sense at the time… Here are some ways this can be achieved by a cult…” (Operation Clambake)

Republican and Democratic officials from city halls to Capitol Hill have expressed concern that the terminals could become targets of terrorist attacks or pose other safety risks, and they have sought a role in siting them. But President Bush has pushed to put Washington in charge of deciding where terminals are built, saying that a lengthy approval process could delay the building of facilities critical to providing the natural gas needed to fuel the nation’s economy.

On Wednesday, a majority of the Senate agreed with him. The lawmakers voted 52-45 against adding a provision to the energy legislation that would have given governors the authority to veto or impose conditions on the terminals. As a result, the Senate bill — like energy legislation approved by the House — would give the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission the final word on where terminals are built, virtually ensuring that the provision will be included in any final bill that emerges from Congress.

The action came as the Senate headed toward approval of a sweeping overhaul of national energy policy, a Bush priority that has gained momentum as energy prices have surged.” (LA Times)

…There is nothing worse than believing your son or daughter, brother or sister, father or mother died in vain. Even those who have opposed the Iraq war all along, who believe that the hope of planting democracy has lured America into a criminal folly, do not want to tell those who have died that they have given their lives for nothing. This is where Jefferson’s dream must work. Its ultimate task in American life is to redeem loss, to rescue sacrifice from oblivion and futility and to give it shining purpose. The real truth about Iraq is that we just don’t know — yet — whether the dream will do its work this time. This is the somber question that hangs unanswered as Americans approach this Fourth of July.” — Michael Ignatieff (New York Times Magazine)

…The true heroes of our history are those Americans who refused to accept that we have a special claim to morality and the right to exert our force on the rest of the world. I think of William Lloyd Garrison, the abolitionist. On the masthead of his antislavery newspaper, The Liberator, were the words, “My country is the world. My countrymen are mankind.”” — Howard Zinn (Boston Review)

…While the mightiest players in Western banking have yet to embrace that notion, and some are dubious of the appeal, the concept has drawn interest in other regions and may get a tryout here soon.” (Lycos)

The outcome capped a stunning upset by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who many reformers fear will take Iran back to the restrictions imposed after the 1979 Islamic Revolution.” (Yahoo! News)

The Egyptian was spirited away in 2003, purportedly as part of the CIA’s ‘extraordinary rendition’ program in which terror suspects are transferred to third countries without court approval, subjecting them to possible torture.

The arrest warrants were announced Friday by the Milan prosecutor’s office, which has called the disappearance a kidnapping and a blow to a terrorism investigation in Italy.” (associated Press)

Adding to the rancor, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., suggested that Republican charges that Democrats were undermining the war on terror with their criticism of administration policies amounted to an act of desperation.” (New York Times )

… (T)he “funny human beings” in the film – famous comedians from Robin Williams to Chris Rock to Phyllis Diller to Jon Stewart – are not merely swearing… They’re telling their versions of a joke that involves every imaginable form of sexual perversion in graphic detail, including but not limited to incest, scatology, bestiality and sadism. Rabelais would blush.” (New York Times )

…He found that as violence became imminent, the cognitive parts of the brain became more active. And during a fight, emotional parts of the brain, such as the amygdala and parts of the anterior cingulate cortex, were shut down. This pattern is the same as that seen in subjects who have had brain scans during other simulated violent situations such as imagining an aggressive encounter. It is impossible to scan people’s brains during acts of real aggression so Mathiak argues that this is as close as you can get to the real thing. It suggests that video games are a “training for the brain to react with this pattern,” he says.” (New Scientist)

“For things that you see over and over again, your family, your boyfriend, or celebrities, your brain wires up and fires very specifically to them. These neurons are very, very specific, much more than people think,” says Christof Koch at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, US, one of the researchers.

In the 1960s, neuroscientist Jerry Lettvin suggested that people have neurons that respond to a single concept such as, for example, their grandmother. The notion of these hyper-specific neurons, coined “grandmother cells” was quickly rejected by psychologists as laughably simplistic.

But Rodrigo Quiroga, at the University of Leicester, UK, who led the new study, and his colleagues have found some very grandmother-like cells. Previous unpublished findings from the team showed tantalising results: a neuron that fired only in response to pictures of former US president Bill Clinton, or another to images of the Beatles…” (New Scientist)

Once customers have filled an initial prescription with the pharmacist, they can register to retrieve and pay for their refills at a vending machine inside the store–even when the pharmacy counter isn’t open. Consumers order their refills in the usual way, either online or by phone. A pharmacist then fills the script and places packaged medicines in the machine. To pick up the order, consumers log on with a user name and password and swipe a credit or debit card. Their pre-wrapped package drops into the bin.

The California and Virginia pharmacy boards have cleared the way for the machines in their states, granting waivers of rules that require a pharmacist be present in order for drugs to be dispensed. And other states are considering allowing the machines.”

(MedGadget)

But that’s the case with Willaim Powell’s The Anarchist Cookbook, a guide to weapons and bomb-making, written 36 years ago, during the turbulent 1960s, by a 19-year-old fresh out of high school.

Powell has taken the unusual step of renouncing his work in an author’s review on Amazon.com, one of many retail venues still selling the book.” (WorldNetDaily)

Now, under pressure from Congress, the Justice Department is investigating whether political appointees ordered government lawyers to cave in a blatant political favor to the industry. But the story is clear: Big Tobacco has made millions in campaign contributions. And now they’re calling in a favor!

We’re planning a virtual protest on June 23 to show the Bush Administration that selling out the public health will not stand!

Would you consider providing a link to www.DontPardonBigTobacco.org and encourage your readers to join the campaign? You can also obtain more information on the lawsuit at http://www.tobaccofreekids.org/reports/doj/.

Activists can send a letter to the Administration, write a letter to the editor, or sign up for the Virtual Protest that we’re holding on Thursday, June 23. We need your help to generate enough calls and letters to make them listen and not let Big Tobacco off the hook once again.”

The creator of the site, Cassidy Curtis, a San Francisco animator in his 30’s, isn’t just being cute when he calls it ‘graffiti archaeology.’ It really is archaeology. You start at the surface and then peel away layers to look into the past. When you choose one of the locales and pick which wall you want to see, you are shown a recent photograph first. Then you can move backward in time or hop around, using a timeline at the bottom of the page. You can also zoom in to see details and navigate around the surface of the walls.

In effect, Mr. Curtis has made antigraffiti. He uncovers the layers that each successive graffiti artist has covered up.” (New York Times )

Like opiates and cocaine, nicotine is known to stimulate the release of dopamine in the reward pathways of the brain. This explains its pleasurable and powerfully self-reinforcing effects. Nicotine also releases an array of other neurotransmitters like serotonin, norepinephrine and vasopressin that mediate its other effects, like arousal, alertness and relaxation.”

The decision was the second in eight days in which the Supreme Court overturned a death sentence. Last Monday, in a case from Texas, the court overturned a 20-year-old murder conviction as well as the death sentence on the ground that the jury selection had been infected by racism.

The court also ruled in March that the Constitution barred capital punishment for those who committed crimes before the age of 18.

…Eric M. Freedman, a professor at Hofstra University School of Law who is a specialist in the death penalty and habeas corpus, said the trend indicated that the court was increasingly troubled by problems of adequate representation for capital defendants. “They are starting to put some teeth in their scrutiny” of these cases, Professor Freedman said in an interview. “The basis themes of fundamental fairness in the administration of the death penalty have penetrated the Supreme Court as well as the general public.” ” (New York Times )

Step outside any evening at sunset and look around. You’ll see a giant moon rising in the east. It looks like Earth’s moon, round and cratered; the Man in the Moon is in his usual place. But something’s wrong. This full moon is strangely inflated. It’s huge!

You’ve just experienced the Moon Illusion.

Sky watchers have known this for thousands of years: moons hanging low in the sky look unnaturally big. Cameras don’t see it, but our eyes do. It’s a real illusion.” (NASA)

The research, published in Psychological Science, a journal of the American Psychological Society, suggests that once you’ve seen a news report, you may go on believing it, even if later information shows it to have been false.”