Vatican Vows To Expel Stem Cell Scientists From Church
I am really tempted to just say “Who cares?”, but the reality is that roughly 1.1 billion people will at least take note of this pronouncement from on high. I could go on at length about the so many ways this is wrong. However, I think I will simply leave it as an exercise for the reader.
. . . For three years, Administration lawyers have argued that the Geneva Conventions don’t apply to its “war on terror”. That argument is finished. . . .
A President Rebuked by Bruce Shapiro in The Nation
Grenade Found Inside Houston Police Headquarters
A live grenade was found inside Houston police headquarters near downtown on Thursday, a source told KPRC Local 2.
Officials said the grenade was discovered in the accident division at 61 Riesner near Lubbock at about 4:30 p.m.
Part of the building was evacuated as a precaution.
Investigators said the grenade was inside a duffel bag that was confiscated from an aggravated robbery suspect whose vehicle was impounded.
The grenade was described as inert and not considered dangerous.
Underlines added by me… How can a grenade be both live, and inert and not dangerous, at the same time?
Young girls should get cancer vaccine, panel says
Dr. Cynthia Rand of the University of Rochester in New York said she believed most people would get the vaccine. She has started a series of studies on how many people would take the vaccine if offered.
“The minority of parents we interviewed didn’t think their children wouldn’t be needing it because their children wouldn’t be having sex. But they thought it would be needed in the general community,” she said in a telephone interview.
WTF?
Now to be clear, I am very happy to see this outcome. I really expected a much more difficult battle with the ACIP.
In a complicated vote, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices agreed to recommend the vaccine for three groups — all young girls aged 11 and 12; girls and women aged 13 to 26 who have not received the vaccine yet; and women who have had abnormal pap smears, genital warts, or certain other conditions.
At their discretion, physicians could vaccinate as young as nine, the panel decided. The group also voted to include the vaccine in the federal Vaccines for Children Program, under which the government buys vaccines for uninsured or poor schoolchildren.
But can anyone parse that quote from Dr. Rand?
CEO pay-to-minimum wage ratio soars
Today’s average CEO earns more before lunch in one day than the average minimum wage worker earns all year, with a compensation ratio of 821-to-1. CEO pay continues to climb, while the federal minimum wage has remained unchanged since 1997. This week’s Snapshot, by Economic Policy Institute President Lawrence Mishel, previews data to be presented as part of the forthcoming The State of Working America, 2006/07.
This ratio assumes a minimum wage worker with “a full-time, year-round job along with benefits calculated at the economy-wide ratio of compensation to wages.” How many minimum wage workers do you know that actually get 40 hours a week, every week, much less benefits? If anything, therefore, the ratio is understated, from what I can tell.
Effort to outlaw flag burning fails in Senate
That link is Reuter’s headline, not mine. I know it was about a Constitutional Amendment, not a law. Oy vey!
We owe a debt of gratitude to those who voted against this abomination, and a vote for the opponents of those who voted for it. As Leonard Pitts Jr. referred to it, misplaced patriotism on display has not changed anything. At best, it stirred up their conservative base, and gave the Republicans a talking point for the mid-term elections. It appears clear to me that this is all it was ever about.
As the Associated Press story put it:
Winning isn’t the only goal for those measures or other social policy proposals congressional Republicans will bring up this year in an effort to energize their base of voters.
House Republicans intend to hold votes this summer and fall touching on abortion, guns, religion and other priority issues for social conservatives, part of an attempt to improve the party’s prospects in the midterm elections.
An Aging Trans Woman 