Fuck The Senate

Last night, I personally voted 72-28 in favor of donating money to MoveOn.org. Donate today and tell the Senate to mind their own fucking business and stop trying to intimidate the citizenry.

Gathering of Shit

Way to support the troops, shitstains! Michelle Malkin must be so proud.

From Crooks and Liars:
Gold Star Father Who Lost Son In Iraq Allegedly Beaten By Members Of Pro-War Group

America Officially a Third-World Nation

Canadian Dollar Trades Equal to U.S. for First Time Since 1976
Humiliating:

Canada's dollar traded equal to the U.S. currency for the first time in three decades, capping a five-year run on the back of booming demand for the nation's commodities.

The Canadian dollar rose as high as $1.0002, before retreating to 99.81 U.S. cents at 1:37 p.m. in New York. It has soared 62 percent from a record low of 61.76 U.S. cents in 2002. The U.S. dollar fell as low as 99.98 Canadian cents today. The Canadian currency last closed above $1 on Nov. 25, 1976, when Pierre Trudeau was Canada's prime minister.

The move to parity marks a milestone for a currency dubbed the loonie for the bird that adorns the nation's one-dollar coin. Parity also symbolizes Canada's emerging clout in a world economy increasingly short of the energy, grains and metals the country produces.

``It's a long time since those heady days,'' said Frank McKenna, 59, deputy chairman of Toronto-Dominion Bank, the country's third-biggest lender, and a former ambassador to the U.S. ``Canadians should understand that this is a badge of confidence in our country.''

Warren Jeffs Polygamy Cult Update

In Polygamy Country, Old Divisions Are Fading - New York Times

Now Mr. Jeffs is being tried on felony charges that he was an accomplice to rape in arranging polygamous marriages between under-age girls and older men, and the jury is being drawn from a pool of St. George residents.

The trial is expected to throw a sharp light on polygamy and on the culture of Mr. Jeffs’s group in particular, the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which is estimated to number about 10,000 people throughout the West. Jury selection began Friday, and Mr. Jeffs, 51, could face life in prison if convicted.

The old and bitter history of intra-Mormon relations hangs over everything here. But many people said the divisions were not what they once had been. Even as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, as the Mormon Church is known, has cracked down on polygamy in recent years, an intermingling of cultures has begun to bubble up here, opening hearts and minds in greater understanding, if not quite tolerance.

Economics, not religion, is driving the change.

St. George and Washington County have exploded with growth over the last 10 years, as retirement and tourism melded with the draw of Las Vegas, about two hours away. For years, the county has ranked near the top of the nation in its rate of expansion.

In the polygamist communities of Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Ariz., which Mr. Jeffs presided over as a prophet of God, according to his followers, family-based construction companies dominate business. St. George, about 35 miles away, grew and changed, drawing more non-Mormons than ever before, and polygamist builders were often the ones framing rows of new homes and pouring concrete foundations.

And so the two sides got to know each other better. Some people here said that they hated what they had read about Mr. Jeffs, but that they had come to like some of the polygamists they had met.

The article also describes a warming between the two Mormon splinter groups: the mainstream Mormon Church and the polygamist Mormons. Is this an indication that polygamy will again enter mainstream Mormonism?

Feds Homogenizing Religion?

Prisons Purging Books on Faith From Libraries - New York Times

The chaplains were directed by the Bureau of Prisons to clear the shelves of any books, tapes, CDs and videos that are not on a list of approved resources. In some prisons, the chaplains have recently dismantled libraries that had thousands of texts collected over decades, bought by the prisons, or donated by churches and religious groups.

Some inmates are outraged. Two of them, a Christian and an Orthodox Jew, in a federal prison camp in upstate New York, filed a class-action lawsuit last month claiming the bureau’s actions violate their rights to the free exercise of religion as guaranteed by the First Amendment and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

Traci Billingsley, a spokeswoman for the Bureau of Prisons, said the agency was acting in response to a 2004 report by the Office of the Inspector General in the Justice Department. The report recommended steps that prisons should take, in light of the Sept. 11 attacks, to avoid becoming recruiting grounds for militant Islamic and other religious groups. The bureau, an agency of the Justice Department, defended its effort, which it calls the Standardized Chapel Library Project, as a way of barring access to materials that could, in its words, “discriminate, disparage, advocate violence or radicalize.”

Ms. Billingsley said, “We really wanted consistently available information for all religious groups to assure reliable teachings as determined by reliable subject experts.”

This is what happens when you ask the government to restrict Islam. They must then restrict all religions equally, or at appear to do so. The last quote is particularly disturbing. First, they don't want "consistently available material," they want material with consistent content. Second, how is having religious material consistent across various religions even possible? Third, who do they deem to be "reliable subject experts"? And what are "reliable teachings"? Nothing in that sentence conveys an honest intent.

Madeleine L’Engle Dead at 88

Madeleine L’Engle, Children’s Writer, Is Dead - New York Times
I read 'A Wrinkle in Time' when I was 10 or 11 years old and loved it. I'll recommend it to my son in a few years.

Cue the Barry White!

I'm gonna love you just a little more, baby...

Philadelphia Zoo, August 2007