Online Journal of Politics and Foreign Affairs
The United Nations has issued a call for the United States to either try or release the prisoners at Guantánamo. A United Nations report today called on the United States to immediately close the detention center for suspected terrorists at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and to either release its inmates or bring them to trial. The [...]
Vice President Cheney finally spoke publically about his weekend shooting incident. Vice President Dick Cheney on Wednesday accepted full blame for shooting a fellow hunter and defended his decision to not publicly disclose the accident until the following day. He called it “one of the worst days of my life.” “I’m the guy who pulled [...]
England has banned smoking in pubs and all enclosed indoor spaces, joining the rest of its UK brethren. MPs have voted by a huge margin to ban smoking from all pubs and private members’ clubs in England. Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt said the change, expected to take effect in summer 2007, would “save thousands of [...]
Chris Bowers has an interesting take on why the netroots are so angered over Paul Hackett being nudged out of the Ohio Senate race by Democratic Party leaders. This is about power and class within the world of progressive activists. This is how the netroots and the blogosphere primarily diverge from the rest of the [...]
In honor of Valentine’s Day, NRO has compiled companion lists of Men We Love and Women We Love from contributors of the opposite sex. The striking thing about the lists, aside from their ideological tilt, is that the women almost all chose men whose names are instantly recognizable while almost all of the men chose [...]
After a two week hiatus, the Beltway Traffic Jam is back. Now that OTB is on a dedicated server and Mark Jaquith has done most of the under-the-hood tinkering needed to keep the site running, we have re-enabled inline trackbacks on the main page. The daily linkfest: Michael J. Totten is back from Iraq and [...]
This weekend’s hunting accident involving the Vice President has suddenly turned quite serious: The 78-year-old lawyer who was accidentally shot by Vice President Dick Cheney on Saturday suffered a mild heart attack today after bird shot migrated to his heart, doctors in South Texas said. Doctors said Mr. Whittington was moved back into the intensive [...]
I’d like to thank Dr. Joyner for the invitation to post on Outside the Beltway. His interest in shining light into the less popular niches of the blogging world is commendable, to say the least. On my own blog, Crossroads Arabia, I write about Saudi Arabia, particularly how reforms are taking place there, but also [...]
Paul Hackett, the Iraq War veteran who was recently the darling of the Left, has dropped his bid for the U.S. Senate seat held by Mike DeWine under pressure from Democratic leaders including Harry Reid and Charles Schumer. Paul Hackett, an Iraq war veteran and popular Democratic candidate in Ohio’s closely watched Senate contest, said [...]
Israel and the United States are looking at ways to undermine the Hamas-led government in Palestine. The United States and Israel are discussing ways to destabilize the Palestinian government so that newly elected Hamas officials will fail and elections will be called again, according to Israeli officials and Western diplomats. The intention is to starve [...]
Trouble on the trail. Several teams are long overdue at their checkpoint on the Yukon Quest 1,600 km sled dog race. Rookie Whitehorse musher Saul Turner and Alaskan mushers Phil Joy, Jennifer Cochran and Yuka Honda have yet to reach the checkpoint at Central after leaving the Mile 101 dog drop Sunday evening. Some have [...]
Vice President Cheney shot a senior citizen during a hunting trip today. Vice President Dick Cheney accidentally shot and injured a man during a weekend quail hunting trip in Texas, his spokeswoman said Sunday. Harry Whittington, 78, was “alert and doing fine” after Cheney sprayed him with shotgun pellets on Saturday while the two were [...]
Newt Gingrich was given a hero’s welcome at CPAC, doing nothing to dampen speculation that he is running for president. Newt Gingrich, who led the Republican Party to power a dozen years ago, told cheering conservatives Saturday it is time to overhaul a balky, slow-moving government locked in the last century. [...] Gingrich’s appearance at [...]
The popular DVD by mail rental company Netflix is holding its best movies back from its best customers. Manuel Villanueva realizes he has been getting a pretty good deal since he signed up for Netflix Inc.’s online DVD rental service 2 1/2 years ago, but he still feels shortchanged. That’s because the $17.99 monthly fee [...]
Former Connecticut Governor John Rowland has been released from prison a few months early for good behavior. Former Connecticut Gov. John G. Rowland left a federal prison camp Friday after serving more than 10 months for corruption that forced him from office in 2004. Rowland, 48, was released from Loretto Federal Correctional Institution in western [...]
At least 22 people are dead from asuicide bombing and subsequent riots in Pakistan. A suicide bombing ripped through a Shiite procession Thursday in northwestern Pakistan, sparking riots during the Muslim sect’s most important holiday. At least 22 people were killed and dozens injured, officials said. The bomb targeted hundreds of people in a bazaar [...]
The Senate was evacuated when a nerve gas alarm sounded last night. It turned out to be a false alarm. A U.S. Senate office building was evacuated Wednesday evening after a sensor detected the presence of a possible nerve agent, but it was later determined to be a false alarm, sources said. Capitol Police Chief [...]
Canadian Islamic Congress; Islamic Congress Warns Of Emerging Police State As P.m. Harper Appoints “most Feared Five” To New Cabinet — New Ministers Day, Mackay, Cannon, Toews, And Solberg Could Be Bad News For Canadian Rights And Freedoms. With yesterday’s new federal Conservative cabinet appointments, the Canadian Islamic Congress fears that police-state politics which beganunder [...]
CBC; City workers in the Montreal borough of Ville Marie are facing disciplinary action after an investigation showed it took 90 staff hours to fill nine potholes. The 10 employees involved face disciplinary action. Members of the city’s internal investigation service secretly followed three work crews during their shifts last month. The workers, who earn [...]
Here is an interesting write up of some recent research at the National Bureau of Economic Research. How do housing prices affect consumption? The standard story is that an increase in the price of a house is a wealth increase for the household, and hence will lead to an increase in consumption. However, there are [...]
John Burgess notes that many Middle Eastern opinion leaders are (counseling calm reaction to the Danish cartoons that have so many Muslims angered to the point of rioting. Most interestingly, an Arab entrepreneur is launching a new comic book extoling the peaceful virtues all Muslims should live by. One hopes these efforts are successful. Further, [...]
I’m blogging from Amsterdam, having settled into the hotel and gotten Internet connectivity. I’m a bit bleary eyed, as I only got about three hours of sleep. Even though the flight was undersold and Kim and I had bulkhead seats, it’s still rather difficult to get comfortable on an airline seat. One of the strange [...]
Hotline’s Blogometer reports on the sad case of a congressional staffer’s free expression being squelched. Montgomery Advertiser reports, Stormie Janzen, an aide to Sen. Sessions, shut down her MySpace blog after the office received a complaint about “a provocative photo of her bare midriff in unzipped jeans” on the site. Having an interest in Alabama, [...]
James Glassman observes that good retirement planning is like getting good at golf: the best way is to start young. Let’s do the numbers. The average annual return for U.S. large-company stocks (as represented by the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index) for the past 80 years has been about 10 percent after transaction expenses but [...]
Iran’s Hamshahri newspaper is holding a contest for twelve cartoons denying the Holocaust as a protest on the Mohammad cartoons published by the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten and subsquently reprinted around the world. IRAN’S largest selling newspaper announced today it was holding a contest on cartoons of the Holocaust in response to the publishing in European [...]
Google has taken BMW and Ricoh’s German sites off its search listings as punishment for deceptive Web practices. In a move that analysts say indicates a problem that still needs a solution, Google has removed BMW’s German Web site from its index for violating Google’s guidelines against trying to manipulate search results. The move was [...]
No surprise here: More American troops have died on US roads in off-duty motorcycle accidents after they returned from Afghanistan than have been killed fighting there since September 11, 2001, safety records show. Military commanders in north Carolina say the deaths are largely the result of boredom, bonus pay, and adrenalin to burn off after [...]
Scotland On Sunday; Four years ago in Salt Lake, the drug busters came up with a secret test for the blood booster Darbepoetin and caught out two cross-country skiers, Johann Muelegg of Spain and Larissa Lazutina of Russia. But if Repoxygen is used in Turin, the medics have got a headache. America’s Anti-doping Agency senior [...]
Dana Milbank reports that newly elected House Majority Leader John Boehner has announced he is against sweeping bans of taking travel money from lobbyists. Newly elected House Majority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) said he opposed efforts to ban privately funded travel for members of Congress and provisions in spending bills that fund lawmakers’ pet [...]
Daveed Gartenstein-Ross makes an interesting point with respect to the controversial Danish Muslim cartoons that have created a worldwide conflagration. [Jyllands-Posten editor-in-chief Carsten] Juste contended that there is a real fear of being seen as criticizing Islam in large parts of the Western world, and that this fear has bred self-censorship. Juste is right on [...]
Newly elected House Majority Leader John Boehner was cagey this morning when asked by Meet the PRess host Tim Russert if he’d step aside for Tom DeLay if the former Leader were acquitted of the charges he’s facing in Texas. Judd Legum provides the transcript: RUSSERT: If he [DeLay] is acquitted and chooses to come [...]
AOL and Yahoo are trying to charge companies for prompt delivery of email to their customers. Companies will soon have to buy the electronic equivalent of a postage stamp if they want to be certain that their e-mail will be delivered to many of their customers. America Online and Yahoo, two of the world’s largest [...]
A new study claims that, despite feeling stressed and overworked, Americans have more leisure time than ever before. A pair of economists have looked closely at how Americans actually spend their time. Mark Aguiar (at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston) and Erik Hurst (at the University of Chicago’s Graduate School of Business) constructed four [...]
Betty Friedan has died of congestive heart failure. She was 85. Betty Friedan, whose manifesto “The Feminine Mystique” became a best seller in the 1960s and laid the groundwork for the modern feminist movement, died Saturday, her birthday. She was 85. Friedan died at her home of congestive heart failure, according to a cousin, Emily [...]
The Danish Embassy in Damascus has been set on fire as a protest over some cartoons got out of hand. Hundreds of Syrian demonstrators stormed the Danish Embassy in Damascus Saturday and set fire to the building, witnesses said. The demonstrators were protesting offensive caricatures of Islam’s Prophet Mohammed that were first published in a [...]
Lance Armstrong and Sherl Crow are breaking up. Cycling legend Lance Armstrong and rock star Sheryl Crow have split five months after announcing their engagement, the couple said in a joint statement on Friday. The seven-time Tour de France champion has three children from a previous marriage. It would have been Crow’s first marriage. “After [...]
If you haven’t seen the parody video, “Brokeback to the Future,” you really should. Cinematical describes it thusly: It was only a matter of time before someone made fun of Brokeback Mountain…and was actually somewhat funny in the process. Joining the long list of re-cut trailers, Brokeback Mountain has partnered with, of all films, Back [...]
Drudge reports that a Connecticut woman has been arrested for using racial epithets at a Taco Bell. A woman accused of using racial epithets while waiting for food at a Connecticut Taco Bell drive-through window was arrested Wednesday. Jennifer Farrelly, 19, of East Windsor, has been charged with ridicule on account of race, creed or [...]
The Army is training soldiers on how to avoid marrying a jerk. They are the Pentagon’s new “rules of engagement” — the diamond ring kind. U.S. Army chaplains are trying to teach troops how to pick the right spouse, through a program called “How To Avoid Marrying a Jerk.” The matchmaking advice comes as military [...]
Speaking of Blunts, I find this amusing as I prepare to fly to Holland next week: People are stealing Amsterdam’s “no toking” signs. If you can’t beat ‘em … joint ‘em? The City of Amsterdam has begun selling recently introduced “no toking” signs to prevent the official ones from being stolen as collector’s items, a [...]
Roy Blunt says it was the media’s fault he lost his bid for Majority Leader. A day after his loss in the race for House majority leader, Missouri Rep. Roy Blunt said Friday that media calls for a new face in the party’s leadership rather than a desire by Republicans for change drove the outcome. [...]
Dave Chappelle was on today’s Oprah Winfrey Show explaining how he walked away from $50 million and how he might be enticed to come back. Dave Chappelle told Oprah Winfrey he was stressed out and not crazy or on drugs when he abruptly left his hit Comedy Central show last spring during production. In his [...]
Steve Clemons is concerned with the proliferation of conference calls between Members of Congress and like-minded bloggers. [I]t seems increasingly clear to me that those on the call — both the Member of Congress and the bloggers — are engaged in an informal collusion of interests. This may be too harsh a term. The Senators [...]
An Egyptian ship carrying 1300 passengers has sunk. There are survivors but the number is not yet known. An Egyptian passenger ship carrying 1,300 people has sunk in the Red Sea, the head of the Egyptian Maritime Authority, Mahfouz Taha Marzouk, said Friday. The ship, “Salaam 98,” sunk 40 miles off the Egyptian port of [...]
A powerful Muslim leader has declared today an International Day of Anger to express how hurt their prophets feelings are over some Dutch cartoons. A leading Islamic cleric called for an “international day of anger” today over publication of caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed, and a Danish activist predicted that deadly violence could break out [...]