Online Journal of Politics and Foreign Affairs
Only in the PNW (today, just wait for the rest of the country), Seeking to expand the Portland [OR} Police Bureau's applicant pool, Chief Rosie Sizer said Monday that she favors relaxing the department's ban on visible tattoos. "I'm interested in changing our policy, realizing that young people adorn themselves in ways we generally didn't [...]
While much of the media has been focused on some folks reselling cell phones, there have been a few instances of pipe bombs in the Pacific Northwest. I am loathe to paint these situations with the broad-brush of “terrorism.” First, out of Oregon’s capital, numerous pipe bombs found under vehicles Police evacuated the Tyco circuit [...]
Zany, at least according to the Washington Post (isn’t zany an editorial comment?) Jack Carter, the son of former president Jimmy Carter, won the Democratic senatorial nomination Tuesday and will face Republican incumbent John Ensign in November. Also in Nevada, voters picked candidates in two wide-open and sometimes zany primaries to replace Republican Gov. Kenny [...]
This can’t be good In a sudden blow to the nation’s oil supply, half the production on Alaska’s North Slope was being shut down Sunday after BP Exploration Alaska, Inc. discovered severe corrosion in a Prudhoe Bay oil transit line. BP officials said they didn’t know how long the Prudhoe Bay field would be off [...]
The times, they are changing, The Pentagon plans to give South Korea wartime operational control over U.S. troops within three years and will keep U.S. troop levels at more than 20,000 over the next several years, defense officials said yesterday. Ok, status quo. Following the latest round of U.S.-South Korea talks July 13 and 14, [...]
I agree judges need to remain impartial, but I do not believe they need to be isolated from society. There is probably some fine legal point here that supersedes common sense James Degroff, once convicted for child molestation, is getting a second chance to proving he never molested a 6-year-old girl four years ago. What’s [...]
There is apparently a simple solution for the stain of being unpopular with the public, change your name. The Association of Trial Lawyers of America voted during its convention this week to change its name to the American Association for Justice. Spokeswoman Chris Mather said there was overwhelming support for the change, and that the [...]
Interesting article, if you pay for it , they will come (if you click on the print option, you will get the full article, but cancel the print). Oregon is on the leading edge of a new fertility frontier. Decades after artificial insemination became commonplace, would-be parents are testing the ethical boundaries of surrogacy here, [...]
Nothing like a little public humiliation for making a false official statement. Out of Whitefish, Montana come the story of a man sentenced to wear a sandwich-board stating “I am a liar. I am not a Marine. I have never served my country.” A Whitefish man was sentenced Thursday to spend 50 hours wearing a [...]
Washington Post, Page B-5, Obituaries Brandon J. Webb was good at a lot of things. “He was an amazing student,” said his older brother, Austin W. Christofferson. “He loved baseball. He liked to pitch. And he loved painting Warhammer figurines.”…”He always wanted to be a Marine,” his brother said. “His uncle Eddie was also a [...]
Except this time, it looks like there was incompetence in the FBI that prompted the security breech. A government consultant, using computer programs easily found on the Internet, managed to crack the FBI’s classified computer system and gain the passwords of 38,000 employees, including that of FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III. The break-ins, which [...]
This almost goes in the Gone Hollywood section, but Cher is doing a class act in gathering attention to the troops, while still opposing the concept of the war in Iraq. She is putting her money (over $130K) and celeb status behind an effort to improve soldiers’ helmets. Cher, who opposes the war in Iraq [...]
Made you look. Turns out Viagra has other benefits, such as enhanced performance at high altitudes such as in Afghanistan. You can’t write about this topic without double entendres, intentional or not, without warping the meaning. It is hard (oops, tuff) to do, so I won’t try, indeed, I will highlight it. As the commercials [...]
Three cops and an American resident too. But not much press attention. Why? Maybe because it didn’t happen 6000 miles away in Baghdad, but 25 miles away in Rosarito Beach, Baja California Norte (BCN), Mexico (near Tijuana, and in the same municipality/municipo). The LA Times reports Mexican authorities discovered the decapitated bodies of three police [...]
If there isn’t an academic to study it, does it really exist? And if an issue is found, is the solution to establish a new academic center to study it? That seems to be what the Dutch are doing The Centrum voor Radicalisme en Extremisme Studies (CRES) is being hosted by the University of Amsterdam [...]
Despite numerous possible meanings to the headline above, AP reports the Congressional Black Causus opposes the treatment that Representative William Jefferson (D-LA) is receiving A drive by the Democratic leadership to strip embattled Rep. William Jefferson of his committee post triggered a backlash Thursday as the Congressional Black Caucus opposed the move and said the [...]
The linchpin of the North Atlantic portion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO/ETAN) is no longer considered important, so the USA is pulling out. Totally out by October. And the airwaves are silenced, the last Mahan high school graduation has occurred. NAS KeflavÃk is soon no more. Icelandic National Broadcasting Service, RÚV, reports that [...]
I guess the anti-war activists have had their day in the spotlight and nobody cares anymore, as I find few blog posts on the anti-war activists in Olympia, WA this past week. While the rest of America was commemorating Memorial Day, they were protesting the loading of the USNS Pomeroy, a cargo ship, with equipment [...]
Jame’s post below about some CT challenger to Joe Lieberman whom I have never heard of sent me to memeorandum, where this jewel of under reported stories was displayed. Doctor Blames Viagra, Lack Of Sex Education Doctors said sexually transmitted diseases among senior citizens are running rampant at a popular Central Florida retirement community, according [...]
In the next chapter of the military health care system is broken, or the military health care is the model for a national health care system, we have yet another proposal to reorganize military health care, following on the really stupid proposal to increase fees to drive folks away from TRICARE (all it would do [...]
As a disclaimer up front, friends’ of friends were killed in the Pentagon attack. And I knew one of the NYC firefighters buried in the collapse of the Towers. My question here is why did it take so long to release this tape? Instead we have fake documentaries out of France questioning the attacks. The [...]
In yet another article about how only what happens in Washington DC or NYC matters (another example is the lack of landfill space in NYC means a landfill crisis in all of America), we have a WaPo article on Salvadorians in the USA, meaning the general Washington DC area, being the typical Hispanic undocumented alien, [...]
Financial news pioneer Louis Ruyeyser has died. Also the longest running host on PBS until Maryland Public TV, which produced his weekly show for 32 years, decided to reinvent the wheel and dumped him in 2002 because he was too old in their view, causing the largest loss of income to local PBS stations ever, [...]
There are conflicting reports out that the long-standing tariff disputes over Canadian imported lumber to the USA has finally been settled. For those not living near the Canadian border, the USA’s largest trading partner and a country with whom we have not been at war with since 1815, this is a big deal in Canada. [...]
In yet another United Nations irony, Iran has been elected the Vice-Chairman of the current UN Commission on Disarmament along with Chile and Uruguay. What’s next, Sudan on the Human Rights Commission? (Oops, that happened.) The election was on April 10, but is only getting noticed now. As Senator Norm Coleman (R-MN) protests, The election [...]
A study out of the Oregon National Primate Research Center (um, why does Oregon have that, and not West Virginia?) has found that the most important factor in maintaining current weight, and not gaining weight, is activity level, not what is eaten (within common sense limits of course, Fast Food Nation failing that test). This [...]
Or is that Taiwan? Travel story from hell. Business flight across China leaves man stranded As the sun dipped low in the sky last Sunday and his plane began its descent, Eugene Nelson had a sinking feeling that something was wrong. He’d been in the air for hours, much longer than his business flight from [...]
Suddenly, IRS Audit info has became a matter of national security (yes, I’m being facetious) A federal judge has ordered the IRS to resume providing enforcement data to a noted tax researcher, two years after the Bush administration stopped making the information public. U.S. District Judge Marsha Pechman told the agency Monday to turn over [...]
Governement by kleptocracy WaPo reports, Venezuela has seized control of oil fields from France’s Total SA and Italy’s Eni SPA in a show of force against those resisting President Hugo Chavez’s efforts to pry more profits from the industry at a time of high oil prices. The move signals that Chavez’s government is ready to [...]
There has been a media frenzy, and blogswarm on the statements of former hostage Jill Carroll. Today she has repudiated much that was attributed to her. As always, read the whole thing, which includes the editor’s statement. Following is Ms. Carroll’s statement, I’m so happy to be free and am looking forward to spending a [...]
The Pacific Northwest has had the highest unemployment in the nation during the Bush Administrations, and similar numbers existed in the Clinton Administrations. But things are looking up. Washington’s latest unemployment rate improved to 4.6 percent in updated January figures released Tuesday by the state Department of Employment Security. The adjustment, reflecting new workforce numbers [...]
Ewe have to be kidding. Soldiers undergo farm training to gain skills for Iraq. (this headline is from another version with registration required, so I can’t take credit) The Army is responding to an unusual problem – your road is blocked by a bunch of sheep (or goats) – what do you do? Or you [...]
Up, up and away The Department of Defense is feeling the pinch of the increasing cost of health care, so the solution is to drive as many retirees who were promised life-time heath care (OK, an entitlement) out of the system as possible by making those that remain pay over triple their current costs. Defense [...]
Buried on page A19 of the Washington Post we find Belgian police raided homes in four cities Wednesday and detained 14 people suspected of involvement in a terrorist network that sent fighters to Iraq, including a Belgian woman reported to have carried out a suicide bombing in Baghdad…. More than 200 police officers took part [...]
From Strategy Page comes this latest scam, though in this case, not out of Nigeria (yet). The latest criminal racket in the Middle East is to scam money out of the families of al Qaeda terrorists who have gone to Iraq and, well, disappeared. Several thousand Saudi Arabian men have gone to Iraq to fight [...]
Zimbabwe Scolds, but Does Not Expel, U.S. Ambassador In the surreal world, on page WaPo A19 (meaning really hidden) Zimbabwe’s foreign minister chastised U.S. Ambassador Christopher W. Dell on Wednesday but stopped short of expelling the envoy for giving two speeches last week in which he blamed the “corrupt rule” of President Robert Mugabe for [...]
The last-ditch effort to reject the Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) has failed 324-84, clearing the way for the BRAC Report to become law in mid-November. A plan to close and reconfigure hundreds of military bases is sailing through Congress, on track to take effect next month in a blow to communities hoping for an [...]
Front page in the Washington Post. The nation’s capital began preparations yesterday for a historic weekend, when civil rights matriarch Rosa Parks will become one of only 30 Americans ever honored with the pomp and ritual of a Capitol Rotunda viewing. The woman who quietly refused to give up her bus seat to a white [...]
Another case of urban violence, but this case is getting the attention it should. Seattle Seahawks safety Ken Hamlin was in intensive care at Harborview Medical Center with a fractured skull, bruising of the brain and a broken hand following a fight outside a Seattle nightclub early Monday. Team physician Dr. Stan Herring said Hamlin [...]
Leadership Shake-Up Spurred Policy Shift (WaPo) The WashingtonPost has a front page article on how the (temporary?) ouster from House Majority Leader Tom “there is no pork in the budget” DeLay has become an opportunity for the Republican Study Committee (RSC) to call for fiscal restraint and offsets to pay for Hurricane Katrina. House Republican [...]
Council Hastens To Revise DUI Law What we have here is a discretionary policy, we arrest those whom we wish to. Don̢۪t worry about this new law, it is discretionary, we only arrest those we want to in our superior law enforcement hat, because we (law enforcement) are so much better than you (the proletariat). [...]
Agreement resolves disability dispute with housing contractor at Fort Lewis (Registration required) Shorter version (no reg) here Gone are the old days at many bases where military housing was run by a bunch of incompetent bureaucrats, lording over the fiefs, er, soldiers and sailors. Today, much of that has been outsourced, and we now have [...]
Putin sacks Russian Navy chief AuBC Russian President Vladimir Putin has sacked Navy chief Admiral Vladimir Kuroyedov as the military faces criticism over its handling of a mini-submarine accident last month. The Kremlin says Mr Putin has appointed Admiral Vladimir Masorin as the new head of the Navy. Mr Putin did not give a reason [...]
What a difference a century makes. We deal with looters, vagabonds, and the lazy significantly differently these days. … authorized my me to KILL any and all persons engaged in Looting or in the Commission of Any Other Crime – see link for full scan of the proclamation. I do NOT see this as an [...]
Massive federal relief effort under way FEMA sends rescue teams, Pentagon sends ships, helicopters Victims of Hurricane Katrina — some of whom escaped with only their lives — soon will get help from a massive federal relief effort led by the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Pentagon. The FEMA effort includes search teams to [...]
Native wind energy efforts display vision (ICT) It is good to finally see some potential for American Indians away from the major metropolitan areas. Most Indians are not the Mishatucket Pequots (Foxwoods Casino) where everyone is a millionaire. Intertribal COUP is a nonprofit council of federally recognized Indian tribes from North Dakota (Mandan, Arikara and [...]
Some stories are simply disturbing. And sometimes the law is wrong. From the front page of the Seattle PI (but almost no other coverage by using Google News and CNN), a Federal case has been reversed by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals (San Francisco) Court sides with Navy in dispute over abortion – [...]
In the reality is stranger than fiction category, SEC probes dwarf-tossing party for Fidelity trader (UK the Independent) What would top brokers give to please traders from the world’s largest fund manager? Lavish yachts, attractive female company and a dwarf to toss. . . . Another person hired was Danny Black, who describes himself as [...]