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Dave
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Posted: Mon Dec 5th, 2005 12:51 pm |
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Norco firefighter, two others shot during toy drive
NORCO, Calif. A Norco firefighter has been wounded along with two other men after shots were fired at a Christmas toy drive at a local bar.
Authorities believe the shootings may have been part of a fight between rival motorcycle clubs.
The firefighter was shot in the left thigh by what investigators believe was a stray bullet.
None of the injuries were life threatening, Riverside County Sheriff's spokesman Tim Brause said.
The Hessians motorcycle club had collected the toys Norco firefighters were picking up at a bar called Mavericks.
Investigators are still interviewing witnesses.NORCO, Calif. A Norco firefighter has been wounded along with two other men after shots were fired at a Christmas toy drive at a local bar.
Authorities believe the shootings may have been part of a fight between rival motorcycle clubs.
The firefighter was shot in the left thigh by what investigators believe was a stray bullet.
None of the injuries were life threatening, Riverside County Sheriff's spokesman Tim Brause said.
The Hessians motorcycle club had collected the toys Norco firefighters were picking up at a bar called Mavericks.
Investigators are still interviewing witnesses.
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Dave
Supporter
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Posted: Sun Dec 4th, 2005 01:33 pm |
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Wikipedia and the nature of truth
By Charles Cooper
http://news.com.com/Wikipedia+and+the+nature+of+truth/2010-1025_3-5979331.html
Story last modified Fri Dec 02 04:00:00 PST 2005
Perhaps the most recognized application of open-source technology in the world, Wikipedia is the online encyclopedia that has become a research staple for millions of Web users.
Written collaboratively by volunteers, Wikipedia has become a smash success. The free site includes more than 845,000 articles in English alone and has won a loyal legion of fans. John Seigenthaler does not number among them.
In an op-ed published Thursday in USA Today, Seigenthaler wrote about his anguish after learning about a false Wikipedia entry that listed him as having been briefly suspected of involvement in the assassinations of both John Kennedy and Robert Kennedy. The 78-year-old Seigenthaler--a former assistant attorney general working under Bobby Kennedy--got Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales to delete the defamatory information in October. Unfortunately, that was four months after the original posting.
Maybe this is part of the price that we're going to have to pay for the open approach where the system's very strength sometimes turns out to be its Achilles' heel: Somebody nursing a grudge can always pervert or airbrush the historical record. To be sure, it can happen in the so-called proprietary or for-profit world as well. The hope is that the collective wisdom of the cyberworld can police the system to catch the mistakes sooner rather than later.
Of course, Seigenthaler might have registered as a user with Wikipedia and corrected the article himself. Failing that, he could have posted comments to the article correcting the mistakes. The reality is that this is asking too much. We're talking about a 78-year-old guy who came of age when state-of-the-art was defined by 78 rpm records, tube radios and black-and-white televisions. And with so much stuff out there--and more getting created each day--was the burden on Seigenthaler to know he was the subject of a Wikipedia article? I'm sure his first question was, "What in the heck is a Wikipedia?"
For younger people, this is all second nature. Increasingly they rely--maybe exaggeratedly so--on the Internet for information. Purists may sniff at the elevation of Wikipedia to the rank of serious reference source. But that's what it has become for millions of people around the world.
On your ride home today, try pondering a future where Wikipedia's model of competing versions of the truth becomes the norm. Will the increasing influence of the wisdom of the crowd force us to rethink the nature of knowledge? With the proliferation of the Internet, more voices inevitably will become part of that conversation.
You can argue that epistemological revisionism goes on all the time. As a kid, I remember thumbing through a 1920s encyclopedia when I found a discussion of different racial categories. Someone reading the entry decades later would have found the assertions in that article to be nonsensical, if not borderline racist. But when the book was published, the people who might have corrected the record had no power over the publishing company printing up the product line. With the Internet, anyone with an online connection can chime in.
We're still settling into the new order, and the Seigenthaler episode highlights the challenge of fairly refereeing the debate. Ostensibly, the objective is truth. But questions about the nature of truth date back to Plato and Aristotle. It's a vexing argument that continues to the present day.
http://news.com.com/2102-1025_3-5979331.html?tag=st.util.print
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Dave
Supporter
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Posted: Sat Dec 3rd, 2005 01:31 pm |
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Mikey wrote:
Dave wrote: Crawford, Texas -- A tragic flood this morning destroyed the personal library of President George W. Bush. The flood began in the presidential bathroom where the books were kept. Both of his books have been lost.
A presidential spokesman said the president was devastated, as he had almost finished coloring the second one. The White House tried to call FEMA but there was no answer. Thats not funny..thats where I keep my library..except for the volumes stacked up in the garage..LOL
You're right, the location ain't cool, I keep a collection there too. But, what they are were IS funny...LOL...
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Mikey
Supporter
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Posted: Sat Dec 3rd, 2005 01:25 pm |
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Dave wrote: Crawford, Texas -- A tragic flood this morning destroyed the personal library of President George W. Bush. The flood began in the presidential bathroom where the books were kept. Both of his books have been lost.
A presidential spokesman said the president was devastated, as he had almost finished coloring the second one. The White House tried to call FEMA but there was no answer. Thats not funny..thats where I keep my library..except for the volumes stacked up in the garage..LOL
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marc
Supporter
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Posted: Sat Dec 3rd, 2005 11:40 am |
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| Could not flush all that shit he is full of...LOL...
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Dave
Supporter
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Posted: Sat Dec 3rd, 2005 11:13 am |
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Crawford, Texas -- A tragic flood this morning destroyed the personal library of President George W. Bush. The flood began in the presidential bathroom where the books were kept. Both of his books have been lost.
A presidential spokesman said the president was devastated, as he had almost finished coloring the second one. The White House tried to call FEMA but there was no answer. Last edited on Sat Dec 3rd, 2005 11:13 am by Dave |
zippo
Supporter
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Posted: Fri Dec 2nd, 2005 10:29 pm |
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This was in yesterday' Wall Street Journal. Funny I never saw a word about in in the NY Times
Our Troops Must Stay
By JOE LIEBERMAN
November 29, 2005; Page A18
I have just returned from my fourth trip to Iraq in the past 17 months and can report real progress there. More work needs to be done, of course, but the Iraqi people are in reach of a watershed transformation from the primitive, killing tyranny of Saddam to modern, self-governing, self-securing nationhood -- unless the great American military that has given them and us this unexpected opportunity is prematurely withdrawn.
Progress is visible and practical. In the Kurdish North, there is continuing security and growing prosperity. The primarily Shiite South remains largely free of terrorism, receives much more electric power and other public services than it did under Saddam, and is experiencing greater economic activity. The Sunni triangle, geographically defined by Baghdad to the east, Tikrit to the north and Ramadi to the west, is where most of the terrorist enemy attacks occur. And yet here, too, there is progress.
There are many more cars on the streets, satellite television dishes on the roofs, and literally millions more cell phones in Iraqi hands than before. All of that says the Iraqi economy is growing. And Sunni candidates are actively campaigning for seats in the National Assembly. People are working their way toward a functioning society and economy in the midst of a very brutal, inhumane, sustained terrorist war against the civilian population and the Iraqi and American military there to protect it.
It is a war between 27 million and 10,000; 27 million Iraqis who want to live lives of freedom, opportunity and prosperity and roughly 10,000 terrorists who are either Saddam revanchists, Iraqi Islamic extremists or al Qaeda foreign fighters who know their wretched causes will be set back if Iraq becomes free and modern. The terrorists are intent on stopping this by instigating a civil war to produce the chaos that will allow Iraq to replace Afghanistan as the base for their fanatical war-making. We are fighting on the side of the 27 million because the outcome of this war is critically important to the security and freedom of America. If the terrorists win, they will be emboldened to strike us directly again and to further undermine the growing stability and progress in the Middle East, which has long been a major American national and economic security priority.
* * *
Before going to Iraq last week, I visited Israel and the Palestinian Authority. Israel has been the only genuine democracy in the region, but it is now getting some welcome company from the Iraqis and Palestinians who are in the midst of robust national legislative election campaigns, the Lebanese who have risen up in proud self-determination after the Hariri assassination to eject their Syrian occupiers (the Syrian- and Iranian-backed Hezbollah militias should be next), and the Kuwaitis, Egyptians and Saudis who have taken steps to open up their governments more broadly to their people. In my meeting with the thoughtful prime minister of Iraq, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, he declared with justifiable pride that his country now has the most open, democratic political system in the Arab world. He is right.
In the face of terrorist threats and escalating violence, eight million Iraqis voted for their interim national government in January, almost 10 million participated in the referendum on their new constitution in October, and even more than that are expected to vote in the elections for a full-term government on Dec. 15. Every time the 27 million Iraqis have been given the chance since Saddam was overthrown, they have voted for self-government and hope over the violence and hatred the 10,000 terrorists offer them. Most encouraging has been the behavior of the Sunni community, which, when disappointed by the proposed constitution, registered to vote and went to the polls instead of taking up arms and going to the streets. Last week, I was thrilled to see a vigorous political campaign, and a large number of independent television stations and newspapers covering it.
None of these remarkable changes would have happened without the coalition forces led by the U.S. And, I am convinced, almost all of the progress in Iraq and throughout the Middle East will be lost if those forces are withdrawn faster than the Iraqi military is capable of securing the country.
The leaders of Iraq's duly elected government understand this, and they asked me for reassurance about America's commitment. The question is whether the American people and enough of their representatives in Congress from both parties understand this. I am disappointed by Democrats who are more focused on how President Bush took America into the war in Iraq almost three years ago, and by Republicans who are more worried about whether the war will bring them down in next November's elections, than they are concerned about how we continue the progress in Iraq in the months and years ahead.
Here is an ironic finding I brought back from Iraq. While U.S. public opinion polls show serious declines in support for the war and increasing pessimism about how it will end, polls conducted by Iraqis for Iraqi universities show increasing optimism. Two-thirds say they are better off than they were under Saddam, and a resounding 82% are confident their lives in Iraq will be better a year from now than they are today. What a colossal mistake it would be for America's bipartisan political leadership to choose this moment in history to lose its will and, in the famous phrase, to seize defeat from the jaws of the coming victory.
The leaders of America's military and diplomatic forces in Iraq, Gen. George Casey and Ambassador Zal Khalilzad, have a clear and compelling vision of our mission there. It is to create the environment in which Iraqi democracy, security and prosperity can take hold and the Iraqis themselves can defend their political progress against those 10,000 terrorists who would take it from them.
* * *
Does America have a good plan for doing this, a strategy for victory in Iraq? Yes we do. And it is important to make it clear to the American people that the plan has not remained stubbornly still but has changed over the years. Mistakes, some of them big, were made after Saddam was removed, and no one who supports the war should hesitate to admit that; but we have learned from those mistakes and, in characteristic American fashion, from what has worked and not worked on the ground. The administration's recent use of the banner "clear, hold and build" accurately describes the strategy as I saw it being implemented last week.
We are now embedding a core of coalition forces in every Iraqi fighting unit, which makes each unit more effective and acts as a multiplier of our forces. Progress in "clearing" and "holding" is being made. The Sixth Infantry Division of the Iraqi Security Forces now controls and polices more than one-third of Baghdad on its own. Coalition and Iraqi forces have together cleared the previously terrorist-controlled cities of Fallujah, Mosul and Tal Afar, and most of the border with Syria. Those areas are now being "held" secure by the Iraqi military themselves. Iraqi and coalition forces are jointly carrying out a mission to clear Ramadi, now the most dangerous city in Al-Anbar province at the west end of the Sunni Triangle.
Nationwide, American military leaders estimate that about one-third of the approximately 100,000 members of the Iraqi military are able to "lead the fight" themselves with logistical support from the U.S., and that that number should double by next year. If that happens, American military forces could begin a drawdown in numbers proportional to the increasing self-sufficiency of the Iraqi forces in 2006. If all goes well, I believe we can have a much smaller American military presence there by the end of 2006 or in 2007, but it is also likely that our presence will need to be significant in Iraq or nearby for years to come.
The economic reconstruction of Iraq has gone slower than it should have, and too much money has been wasted or stolen. Ambassador Khalilzad is now implementing reform that has worked in Afghanistan -- Provincial Reconstruction Teams, composed of American economic and political experts, working in partnership in each of Iraq's 18 provinces with its elected leadership, civil service and the private sector. That is the "build" part of the "clear, hold and build" strategy, and so is the work American and international teams are doing to professionalize national and provincial governmental agencies in Iraq.
These are new ideas that are working and changing the reality on the ground, which is undoubtedly why the Iraqi people are optimistic about their future -- and why the American people should be, too.
* * *
I cannot say enough about the U.S. Army and Marines who are carrying most of the fight for us in Iraq. They are courageous, smart, effective, innovative, very honorable and very proud. After a Thanksgiving meal with a great group of Marines at Camp Fallujah in western Iraq, I asked their commander whether the morale of his troops had been hurt by the growing public dissent in America over the war in Iraq. His answer was insightful, instructive and inspirational: "I would guess that if the opposition and division at home go on a lot longer and get a lot deeper it might have some effect, but, Senator, my Marines are motivated by their devotion to each other and the cause, not by political debates."
Thank you, General. That is a powerful, needed message for the rest of America and its political leadership at this critical moment in our nation's history. Semper Fi.
Mr. Lieberman is a Democratic senator from Connecticut.
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weasle
Supporter
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Posted: Fri Dec 2nd, 2005 09:43 pm |
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| boys yer right the gov lied to the people about that . i was their . what really happened was our destroyer escort, i was aboard the uss. ticonderoga, got a bunch of fu---ed up radar readings, and let loose with their 5 in guns. didnt kill nothing but a bunch of fish.
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Randy in Pensacola
Supporter
| Joined: | Wed Nov 3rd, 2004 |
| Location: | |
| Posts: | 916 |
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Posted: Fri Dec 2nd, 2005 08:58 pm |
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Johnson lied Johnson lied
Dave wrote:
Democrats have been pretty quiet about this. I haven't read anything from them. As much noise as Kerry and the gang have been making over Iraq, you'd think that the Republicans would shove up their asses.
But, even the Republicans have been pretty quiet...
US skewed evidence of 1964 Tonkin attack-document
02 Dec 2005 18:47:53 GMT
Source: Reuters
WASHINGTON, Dec 2 (Reuters) - U.S. intelligence officials in 1964 skewed evidence of an attack on two U.S. destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin to support claims of communist aggression that led to a massive escalation of the Vietnam War, according to a newly declassified government document.
An article by a National Security Agency historian, released by the NSA this week along with intelligence reports and other related documents, said officials at the spy agency withheld nearly 90 percent of intelligence on the Aug. 4, 1964, incident to back allegations of a North Vietnamese attack.
"It is not simply that there is a different story as to what happened. It is that no attack happened that night," NSA historian Robert Hanyok wrote.
Hanyok's article, which appeared in a classified NSA publication in 2001, was based on a review of newly discovered signals intelligence documents from 41 years ago.
The Gulf of Tonkin incident gave President Lyndon Johnson carte blanche for a huge U.S. military buildup in Southeast Asia that led to the deaths of more than 58,000 U.S. soldiers and over 2 million Vietnamese civilians.
The New York Times reported Friday that some intelligence officials believe the NSA delayed the release of the Hanyok article to avoid comparisons between skewed Vietnam intelligence and flawed prewar intelligence on Iraq.
But NSA spokesman Don Weber said there was no delay. The agency only waited so it could also make public the raw material Hanyok used in composing his history, he said.
Officials at NSA, the spy agency that monitors transmission signals, provided the Johnson administration only with signals intelligence that supported claims of an attack. The reports were also flawed by severe analytic errors and contained unexplained translation changes, the article said.
In fact, Johnson's main proof that the Aug. 4 attack occurred proved to be a "conjunction of two unrelated messages into one translation," the article stated.
"Information was presented in such a manner as to preclude responsible decisionmakers in the Johnson administration from having the complete and objective narrative," said the article, which was among hundreds of documents on the Gulf of Tonkin released by the NSA.
"The conclusion that would have been drawn from a review of all ... evidence would have been that the North Vietnamese not only did not attack, but were uncertain as to the location of the (U.S.) ships."
Historians have long suspected that government reports of the 1964 attack were fabricated. Robert McNamara, Johnson's defense secretary, said during a visit to Vietnam a decade ago that he had come to believe the attack did not occur.
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Dave
Supporter
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Posted: Fri Dec 2nd, 2005 08:33 pm |
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Democrats have been pretty quiet about this. I haven't read anything from them. As much noise as Kerry and the gang have been making over Iraq, you'd think that the Republicans would shove up their asses.
But, even the Republicans have been pretty quiet...
US skewed evidence of 1964 Tonkin attack-document
02 Dec 2005 18:47:53 GMT
Source: Reuters
WASHINGTON, Dec 2 (Reuters) - U.S. intelligence officials in 1964 skewed evidence of an attack on two U.S. destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin to support claims of communist aggression that led to a massive escalation of the Vietnam War, according to a newly declassified government document.
An article by a National Security Agency historian, released by the NSA this week along with intelligence reports and other related documents, said officials at the spy agency withheld nearly 90 percent of intelligence on the Aug. 4, 1964, incident to back allegations of a North Vietnamese attack.
"It is not simply that there is a different story as to what happened. It is that no attack happened that night," NSA historian Robert Hanyok wrote.
Hanyok's article, which appeared in a classified NSA publication in 2001, was based on a review of newly discovered signals intelligence documents from 41 years ago.
The Gulf of Tonkin incident gave President Lyndon Johnson carte blanche for a huge U.S. military buildup in Southeast Asia that led to the deaths of more than 58,000 U.S. soldiers and over 2 million Vietnamese civilians.
The New York Times reported Friday that some intelligence officials believe the NSA delayed the release of the Hanyok article to avoid comparisons between skewed Vietnam intelligence and flawed prewar intelligence on Iraq.
But NSA spokesman Don Weber said there was no delay. The agency only waited so it could also make public the raw material Hanyok used in composing his history, he said.
Officials at NSA, the spy agency that monitors transmission signals, provided the Johnson administration only with signals intelligence that supported claims of an attack. The reports were also flawed by severe analytic errors and contained unexplained translation changes, the article said.
In fact, Johnson's main proof that the Aug. 4 attack occurred proved to be a "conjunction of two unrelated messages into one translation," the article stated.
"Information was presented in such a manner as to preclude responsible decisionmakers in the Johnson administration from having the complete and objective narrative," said the article, which was among hundreds of documents on the Gulf of Tonkin released by the NSA.
"The conclusion that would have been drawn from a review of all ... evidence would have been that the North Vietnamese not only did not attack, but were uncertain as to the location of the (U.S.) ships."
Historians have long suspected that government reports of the 1964 attack were fabricated. Robert McNamara, Johnson's defense secretary, said during a visit to Vietnam a decade ago that he had come to believe the attack did not occur.
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Mikey
Supporter
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Posted: Fri Dec 2nd, 2005 07:26 pm |
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empty wrote:
Kinda makes you wonder what the hell those other countries are doing with their serial killers..... Saving them up to collect the whole set? Be the first one on your block??
I know....they give em all one way ticket to the USA...
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empty
Supporter
| Joined: | Tue Jun 28th, 2005 |
| Location: | Plano, Texas USA |
| Posts: | 1658 |
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Posted: Fri Dec 2nd, 2005 07:18 pm |
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marc wrote: What the hell is with these people....This bastard deserved to die...Should have killed him back in 88....Think of all the $$ that we could have saved...What a waste and who gives a shit about Singapore and Saudi Arabia???
US executions milestone spurs fresh debate
......
"It is a scandal that the death penalty still exists in a civilized country like the United States of America," said Petra Herrmann, chairwoman of the German group Alive e.V.
"How can a citizen realize that murder is wrong if the state is allowed to murder its own citizens?" she said.
Akiko Takada, of Japan's anti-capital punishment group Forum 90, said that despite frequent U.S. use of the death penalty "crime there shows no signs of diminishing, so ultimately the death of these people has no effect."
"This is one small step for humankind -- backwards," American campaigner Clive Stafford Smith told Reuters in London. "The death penalty makes us all far more barbaric."
...
Kinda makes you wonder what the hell those other countries are doing with their serial killers..... Saving them up to collect the whole set? Be the first one on your block??
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marc
Supporter
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Posted: Fri Dec 2nd, 2005 06:14 pm |
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| Give me a fricking break...Don't these people have more important things to do that could help the school system?????... Get a life...He is 6 years old....
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Dave
Supporter
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Posted: Fri Dec 2nd, 2005 05:45 pm |
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This is so stupid...
6-Year-Old Faces Expulsion For Touching Classmate's Rear
COLERAIN TOWNSHIP, Ohio -- A 6-year-old boy was facing expulsion for touching a classmate's rear end, and his mother said she thinks the school district is going too far, WLWT-TV in Cincinnati reported.
Yolanda Kirk said she's not disputing Northwest Local School District's right to discipline students.
"Don't get me wrong -- it's not right for any child to physically touch another child," she said. "I don't condone it."
A letter from the school district claims that her son, Blake, engaged in sexual acts, displayed excessive affection, engaged in inappropriate touching and used obscene gestures. But Kirk said her son's potential expulsion is excessive.
"He's 6 -- he just came out of kindergarten," she said.
Kirk claims Blake was forced to sign a paper without a parent's consent admitting he was wrong, and then a school security guard purposefully embarrassed him.
"He took him to classroom and told my son's peers what he'd done, and said, 'Don't you ever touch anyone's private areas. Are there any questions?'" Kirk said. "You don't have to embarrass a child like that."
She said after the first time Blake touched a girl's bottom, he was suspended. But she said the second time wasn't intentional.
"He accidentally touched the little girl's bottom -- he told me accidentally -- and he apologized to the little girl," Kirk said.
http://www.nbc4.tv/education/5448231/detail.html
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Randy in Pensacola
Supporter
| Joined: | Wed Nov 3rd, 2004 |
| Location: | |
| Posts: | 916 |
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Posted: Fri Dec 2nd, 2005 05:29 pm |
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we put him on death row cause he was such an upstanding member of soceity........
Just like that guy in California that is the founder of the crips.........
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marc
Supporter
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Posted: Fri Dec 2nd, 2005 05:24 pm |
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What the hell is with these people....This bastard deserved to die...Should have killed him back in 88....Think of all the $$ that we could have saved...What a waste and who gives a shit about Singapore and Saudi Arabia???
US executions milestone spurs fresh debate
By Andy Sullivan
Double murderer Kenneth Lee Boyd became the 1,000th prisoner executed in the United States since the reinstatement of capital punishment when he was put to death by lethal injection on Friday.
The execution drew global attention because of its symbolism since the U.S. Supreme Court allowed the death penalty to be brought back in 1976 after a nine-year unofficial moratorium.
It helped spur renewed debate over U.S. capital punishment, and came on a day that executions in Singapore and Saudi Arabia also sparked international concerns.
"God bless everybody in here," Boyd said in his last words to witnesses from the death chamber at Central Prison in North Carolina's state capital, Raleigh.
Boyd, who was 57, was a Vietnam War veteran with a history of alcohol abuse. He was executed for killing his wife and father-in-law in 1988, in front of two of his children.
"This 1,000th execution is a milestone, a milestone we should all be ashamed of," his lawyer Thomas Maher said.
With polls showing that a declining majority of the American public backs the death penalty, the White House reiterated U.S. President George W. Bush's support.
"The president strongly supports the death penalty because he believes ultimately it helps save innocent lives," White House spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters.
Bush is a former governor of Texas, which has accounted for 355 of the 1,000 executions -- more than three times as many as any other state.
Boyd was wheeled into the death chamber, strapped to a gurney and injected with a fatal mix of three drugs.
He seemed "sort of resigned," said witness Elyse Ashburn.
Sheriff Sam Page of Rockingham County, which prosecuted Boyd, defended the execution. "Tonight justice has been served," he said, and he urged people to pray for the murder victims. Two of the victims' relatives witnessed the execution but did not speak after.
About 100 death-penalty opponents gathered on a sidewalk outside the prison. They held candles and read the names of the other 999 convicts who have been put to death.
DETAINED PROTESTERS
About 17 protesters were detained and charged with trespassing after stepping onto prison property, police said. Witnesses said many had been on their knees in prayer.
World reaction to Boyd's death was swift.
"It is a scandal that the death penalty still exists in a civilized country like the United States of America," said Petra Herrmann, chairwoman of the German group Alive e.V.
"How can a citizen realize that murder is wrong if the state is allowed to murder its own citizens?" she said.
Akiko Takada, of Japan's anti-capital punishment group Forum 90, said that despite frequent U.S. use of the death penalty "crime there shows no signs of diminishing, so ultimately the death of these people has no effect."
"This is one small step for humankind -- backwards," American campaigner Clive Stafford Smith told Reuters in London. "The death penalty makes us all far more barbaric."
Bush believed it was important that the death penalty be administered "fairly and swiftly and surely" with expanded DNA testing to make sure convictions were secure, McClellan said.
FALLING SUPPORT
Thirty-eight of the 50 U.S. states and the federal government permit capital punishment, and only China, Iran and Vietnam held more executions in 2004 than the United States, according to rights group Amnesty International.
A Gallup Poll in October showed 64 percent of Americans favored the death penalty -- the lowest level in 27 years and down from a high of 80 percent in 1994. Improved DNA testing that has led to several criminal convictions being overturned has fueled doubts about the fairness of capital punishment.
Singapore, with the world's highest execution rate relative to population, also carried out a death penalty on Friday, with the hanging of Australian drugs trafficker Nguyen Tuong Van despite Australian government pleas for clemency.
In Saudi Arabia, murderer Ahmad al-Shaater became at least the 78th person put to death this year in the conservative kingdom.
South Carolina was scheduled to execute another American, Shawn Paul Humphries, by lethal injection at 6 p.m. (2300 GMT) on Friday for the killing of a convenience store owner.
Last edited on Fri Dec 2nd, 2005 05:28 pm by marc |
empty
Supporter
| Joined: | Tue Jun 28th, 2005 |
| Location: | Plano, Texas USA |
| Posts: | 1658 |
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Posted: Thu Dec 1st, 2005 09:03 pm |
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weasle wrote: mike y , if they do pass the gun permit law in wisconsin , im sure as in ohio they will have a data base of somekind. here is the kicker on what the opponentes did in ohio. they gave buisness the right to not allow anyone carrying a gun intotheir establishment. so now all the gas stations , dept stores , ect have these neat little signs that say no firearms permitted on our premises. so really you can only protect yourself legally if your in your vehicle or walking down the street.
States that have 'Carry Permits', also have rules for the signs. If you have been through the training and classes, you just automatically recognize the signs and it becomes second nature. In the back of your mind you think "Yup there's another Bozo that thinks only the outlaws should have guns". Every once in a while, around here you will see a sign that welcomes permitted carriers, it sort of gives the robbers something else to think about.
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Dave
Supporter
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Posted: Thu Dec 1st, 2005 08:26 pm |
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Former Gorilla Handlers Settle Lawsuit in Bosom-Baring Case
WOODSIDE, Calif. (AP) 12.01.05, 10:15a -- Two former caretakers who refused to bare their breasts to the 300-pound, sign-language-speaking gorilla named Koko have settled a lawsuit against the Gorilla Foundation.
Nancy Alperin and Kendra Keller claimed they were fired after they refused to expose their bosoms to the primate, and after reporting sanitary problems at Koko's home in Woodside, an upscale town south of San Francisco.
The pair claimed they were threatened that if they ``did not indulge Koko's nipple fetish, their employment with the Gorilla Foundation would suffer,'' the lawsuit alleged. (Just doesn't seem right, I can't get anyone here at work to indulge my nipple fetish. But no one's been fired for it, not even threatened. Except me...LOL)
Alperin and Keller claimed that Francine ``Penny'' Patterson, the gorilla's longtime caretaker and president of the Gorilla Foundation, pressured them to expose their breasts as a way to bond with the 33-year-old female simian.
``On one such occasion,'' the lawsuit said, ``Patterson said, 'Koko, you see my nipples all the time. You are probably bored with my nipples. You need to see new nipples.'' (I'd like to see some new nipples, hell even some old nipples. As long as their attached to a female...LOL)
The plaintiffs, both in their mid-40s, never undressed, said their attorney, Stephen Sommers. The foundation has denied the allegations.
Lawyers for both sides refused to disclose terms of the settlement.
A second similar lawsuit filed by another employee is pending.
The Gorilla Foundation was founded in 1976 to promote the preservation and study of gorillas. It's best known for Koko, who has mastered a vocabulary of more than 1,000 signs. Last edited on Thu Dec 1st, 2005 08:27 pm by Dave |
Mikey
Supporter
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Posted: Thu Dec 1st, 2005 07:19 pm |
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weasle wrote: mike y , if they do pass the gun permit law in wisconsin , im sure as in ohio they will have a data base of somekind. here is the kicker on what the opponentes did in ohio. they gave buisness the right to not allow anyone carrying a gun intotheir establishment. so now all the gas stations , dept stores , ect have these neat little signs that say no firearms permitted on our premises. so really you can only protect yourself legally if your in your vehicle or walking down the street. Thats fine by me....just means I will have to get to the truck faster...
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Dave
Supporter
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Posted: Thu Dec 1st, 2005 07:13 pm |
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When I was in Missouri in May or June of 2004, I stopped at a gas station in O' Fallon (one of the suburbs, west of St Louis) There was a sign out front that said "No Firearms Permitted in Store"...
I just figured there was a bunch of gun-totin' Rednecks in the area...LOL
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