NPCT

Even though I often agree with them in principle, I pretty much ignore the Daily Kos people as being the Democrat equivalent of the Drudge Report and Rush Limbaugh. However, this post really spoke to me, and makes an observation that I have also been making: the Republicans just seem to want to slam [...]

I believe the original article is in Science, here.
The article is only available if you or your institution has an AAAS membership. This behavior seems a bit odd for a group calling it self an “Association for the Advancement of Science.”

There are good cops out there, but sometimes the news makes it seem like they’re all up to no good. Here’s a short video of a good cop doing his job well at a protest in LA. It seemed like it was worth sharing.

This is worth a read. It is an anonymous letter home from an officer in Iraq.

An interesting article here about Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP) - a group of current and former police officers who advocate drug legalization. Worth a look. It’s good to see that there is at least a dialogue starting about ending the futile War on Drugs.

Cole, LEAP’s executive director, spent twelve years as an [...]

Great analysis of many hotly-contested congressional districts here.

It looks like electoral-vote.com is back up for the 2006 mid-term elections. It aggregates polling data to try to predict the outcome of the election if it were held today.

Stephen Colbert talks to Congressman Lynn Westmoreland about the Ten Commandments. Really funny and also sad.

There’s a great article at Slate on the realities of how Bush selects his appointees.

Bush’s stated management model—appointing good people, delegating authority to them, and holding them accountable for results—reflects some common-sense notions he picked up at Harvard Business School. His actual management practice, however, has not followed that model. In practice, Bush tends to [...]

So, Senate Republicans are hoping to give everyone $100 to help pay for gas. Do these guys know something I don’t? So, they’re going to give everyone $100, which will come from… taxes. But because of government waste, etc, that $100 paid in will really be more like $500. Everyone takes a [...]

According to this article on Slate, the redistricting effort in Texas led by Tom De Lay has resulted in the incumbent rewinning their seat 98% of the time.

“As a mapmaker, I can have more of an impact on an election than a campaign, than a candidate,” says Republican consultant David Winston, who drew House seats [...]

Check out this great Doonesbury cartoon on Slate.

I gave a talk on personal finance at Offtopic Lunch on Friday. The slides are here.

Today I found an interesting annotated history of world oil prices.

My PhD supervisor has just finished his new book entitled Power. I don’t know much about it, to be honest, but here is an intro:

Seven internationally renowned writers address the theme of Power from the perspective of their own disciplines. Energy expert Mary Archer begins with an exploration of the power sources of our [...]

A professor at the University of Kansas who has derided Intelligent Design received a roadside beating by people who have obviously embraced Jesus’ teachings of peace and forgiveness.

She said Mirecki reported he was attacked around 6:40 a.m. in rural Douglas County south of Lawrence. Mirecki told the Lawrence Journal-World that he was driving to breakfast [...]

The ever-insightful Slate has an article on the Jose Padilla case:

Had Padilla been charged and tried back in the summer of 2002, rather than touted as some Bond villain—the Prince of Radiological Dispersion—his case would have stood for a simple legal proposition: that if you are a terrorist, a supporter of terrorism, or a would-be [...]

I’m not one to tout “diversity” as an end in itself, but come on people. Pending confirmation of the latest conservative white male to the Supreme Court of the United States, our civil liberties will be in the hands of seven lily-white men, one African American, and one lone woman. Although we clearly [...]

Slate discusses comments from a former Bush administration insider. Here’s a quote from him:

[T]he case that I saw for four-plus years was a case that I have never seen in my study of aberrations, bastardizations, perturbations, changes to the national security decision-making process. What I saw was a cabal between [...]