|
National: Supreme
Court to revisit some old and incendiary issues By BOB EGELKO
- The U.S. Supreme Court will delve into some old and incendiary
issues in its term that started Monday - abortion and the role
of race in public school enrollment - and a relatively new one,
whether the government must regulate pollutants that cause global
warming.
In the process, the justices
are likely to provide answers to questions that were largely
left unanswered in the debut term of President Bush's two appointees,
Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito.
One question is just how far
the court's center of gravity has shifted rightward because of
Alito's replacement of retired Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. Another
is how Roberts' embrace of judicial modesty and humility at his
confirmation hearings will affect his approach to cases in which
the Bush administration seeks to overturn court precedents. -
More...
Monday - October 02, 2006
Science: NASA
aims to find out what's pushing planets farther apart By
SUE VORENBERG - "Stuff" isn't a very scientific word,
but its use grows common when scientists try to describe dark
energy - an unseen force pushing all the bodies in the universe
apart at ever-faster speeds.
Considering that dark energy
could one day tear the entire universe apart, the scientific
community would like to understand that "stuff" better,
said Tom Vestrand, a scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory.
- More...
Monday - October 02, 2006
Columns - Commentary
 Dan
K. Thomasson: It's
the gas prices, stupid - Amidst all the election season Sturm
und Drang about who is responsible for the failure to eliminate
Osama bin Laden and the continuing sectarian violence in Iraq,
one salient fact is emerging: Americans are more likely to consider
gas prices when they enter the polling booth this November.
And the fact those prices have
been falling from record highs seems to have produced a ray of
sunshine in the rather dismal Republican outlook for retaining
control of Congress.
A sage observer of national
political trends once explained that when all is said and done,
U.S. elections always turn on the economy. Whatever else may
seem important beforehand, he said, Americans vote their pocketbooks.
If that climate is good, the candidate in office always has a
leg up unless he is incredibly inept. Two examples of that exception:
Al Gore in 2000 and the current campaign of Republican Sen. George
Allen in Virginia, who has gone from a sure bet to even odds
because of a major public faux pas or two. - More...
Friday - September 29, 2006
 Bonnie
Erbe: America's
quiet acceptance - To date, 65 women soldiers have died fighting
in Iraq and Afghanistan - a small percentage of the U.S. total
of almost 3,000 war dead as of this writing, but a significant
number nonetheless.
Why aren't Americans upset
about this? Or should they be?
A New York Times article commemorating
these women's contributions to the war effort posited that there
once was a time when Americans would have found it morally unacceptable
to witness women soldiers coming home in body bags.
Has that time come and gone?
Or has something else changed? - More...
Friday - September 29, 2006
 Preston
MacDougall: Chemical
Eye on Match Play in the Course of Science - Sending a son
or daughter off to college is never easy. You are hopeful for
their success, but at the same time you expect the intellectual
challenges to be daunting - just like the cost. Sending a son
or daughter off to college is also never cheap.
My recent trip to St. Andrews,
Scotland, had just such a purpose, and no shortage of daunting.
I've been through this before, but at another prestigious university.
Still, during the university principal's welcoming address for
parents, I was ready for a feeling of déjà vu.
I was expecting to be told of its envied reputation and storied
history, and was. Rather than news, these were the reasons I
was there.
One thing did surprise me though.
After suggesting that parents look carefully around the room,
Principal Lang, who is a social anthropologist by training, cited
a recent poll showing that, among all British universities, St.
Andrews' alumni were the most likely to have met their future
spouse during their course of study. - More...
Friday - September 29, 2006
 Clifford
D. May: With
fear and favor - An essential American institution is in
crisis, but the mainstream media is not covering the story. That's
because the institution in crisis is the mainstream media, which
appears incapable of self-examination, much less self-criticism.
When I trained as a journalist
some 30 years ago, there were high walls separating news (what
happened), analysis (how experts interpret what happened) and
opinion (what someone thinks should be done in response to what
happened). Those walls no longer stand.
Today, major media outlets
routinely use news and analysis to score ideological and partisan
points. The most recent example is the front page New York Times
story on a National Intelligence Estimate that no one at the
Times had read. The reporters and editors were satisfied they
knew what was in it based on what they were told by "several
officials in Washington involved in preparing the assessment
or who have read the final document." - More...
Friday - September 29, 2006
 Dick
Morris: The
Real Clinton Emerges - From behind the benign façade
and the tranquilizing smile, the real Bill Clinton emerged Sunday
during Chris Wallace's interview on Fox News Channel. There he
was on live television, the man those who have worked for him
have come to know the angry, sarcastic, snarling, self-righteous,
bombastic bully, roused to a fever pitch. The truer the accusation,
the greater the feigned indignation. Clinton jabbed his finger
in Wallace's face, poking his knee, and invading the commentator's
space.
But beyond noting the ex-president's
non-presidential style, it is important to answer his distortions
and misrepresentations. His self-justifications constitute a
mangling of the truth which only someone who once quibbled about
what the "definition of 'is' is" could perform.
Clinton told Wallace, "There
is not a living soul in the world who thought that Osama bin
Laden had anything to do with Black Hawk Down." Nobody said
there was. The point of citing Somalia in the run up to 9-11
is that bin Laden told Fortune Magazine in a 1999 interview that
the precipitous American pullout after Black Hawk Down convinced
him that Americans would not stand up to armed resistance. -
More...
Friday - September 29, 2006
 Jay
Ambrose: The
Clinton example - Bill Clinton was far guiltier as president
of a lax, timid response to the al Qaeda threat than he let on
in his interview on Fox TV, but his fiery, wipe-that-smirk-off-your-face
answer to a question from the show's surprised host provides
a lesson the Bush administration should heed.
Clinton hit back with everything
he had, misstating the truth some, as usual, while also conveying
that here was an honest man who had been done a major wrong and
wasn't going to take it anymore. Contrast that with the way the
Bush administration so often hides out from direct confrontation,
defending itself more with a little mumbling here and there than
slam-bam rebuttal of the kind it ought now to be making to the
critics saying an official report proves once and for all that
the war in Iraq was a huge mistake. - More...
Friday - September 29, 2006
|
Contact 
