By LAURA BEIL
from The New York Times

Texas has seen the smallest decline in pregnancy and birth rates despite receiving the most money for abstinence education.

HALLSVILLE, Tex. - When Jami Waite graduated from high school this year in this northeastern Texas town, her parents sat damp-eyed in the metal bleachers of Bobcat Stadium, proud in every way possible. Their youngest daughter was leaving childhood an honor graduate, a band member, a true friend, a head cheerleader - and a steadfast virgin.

Eric Love, director of the East Texas Abstinence Program, travels by “Virginity Van” to talk to students. “Sex was designed to bond two people together,” he says.

“People can be abstinent, and it’s not weird,” she declared. With her face on billboards and on TV, Ms. Waite has been an emblem of sexual abstinence for Virginity Rules, which has risen from a single operation in nearby Longview to become an eight-county abstinence franchise.

For the first time, however, Virginity Rules and 700 kindred abstinence education programs are fighting serious threats to their future. Eleven state health departments rejected abstinence education this year, while legislatures in Colorado, Iowa and Washington passed laws that could kill, or at least wound, its presence in public schools.

Opponents received high-caliber ammunition this spring when the most comprehensive study of abstinence education found no sign that it delayed a teenager’s sexual debut. And, after enjoying a fivefold increase in their main federal appropriations, the abstinence programs in June received their first cut in financing from the Senate appropriations committee since 2001.

read more at The New York Times

from Oliver Willis

This is the kind of content we have to look forward to as Fox prepares to launch the Fox Business Channel. From this past weekend’s “Forbes on Fox“, the panelists just got done answering the ludicrous question of whether the uptick in the stock market was a “major” victory over Al Qaeda (because clearly a bull market is the best way to avenge 9/11) and then the conversation went even further off the rails as Fox News contributor and Forbes Magazine publisher Rich Karlgaard asserted that the deaths of U.S. troops in Iraq wasn’t so bad because, hey, they volunteered to serve their country.

You’ll also notice how Fox anchor/host David Asman does his best to cut off and talk over the one panelist who isn’t toeing the right-wing line. That sort of thing is just not allowed on Fox News Channel.

Remember, the right claims that they’re the only ones who “support the troops” (and the media backs them up on it like the lapdogs they are).

read more and see the Fox News Video at Oliver Willis.com

from The Center For American Progress

On Monday night, Fox News host Bill O’Reilly aired a segment full of misleading, inaccurate claims attacking the upcoming YearlyKos blogger convention, its namesake DailyKos, and one of the event’s sponsors, JetBlue. In his “report,” O’Reilly cherry-picked an extreme minority of reader comments and diaries from the hundreds of thousands on DailyKos, claiming them to be representative of the community website and the greater netroots movement that will be gathering in Chicago from Aug. 2-5, 2007 for the progressive convention. Calling the netroots “the radical left” and DailyKos “hatemongerers” like “the Ku Klux Klan” and “the Nazi Party,” O’Reilly compared YearlyKos to “a David Duke convention,” calling it “one of the worst examples of hatred America has to offer.” O’Reilly’s segment, which has been latched onto by his ideological allies in the conservative blogosphere, is an attempt to discredit a movement that “each day” is having “more impact” on America’s political discourse while “helping to renew our democracy.” O’Reilly’s pre-emptive attack on the convention is a testament to the fact that the netroots are not a “nutroots” fringe movement as critics would like to characterize it, but rather a snapshot of energized progressive activists agitating for change in America.

MYTH OF THE ‘CRUDE,’ ‘ANGRY,’ ‘CRASS’ FRINGE: The shoddy journalism of O’Reilly’s YearlyKos hit piece is not the first time the progressive blogosphere has been the target of disingenuous attacks labeling it “the radical left.” After several Democratic presidential candidates backed out of Fox News’s debates due to the news channel’s ideological bent, O’Reilly attacked the grassroots activists who agitated for the pullout, calling them a “radical movement” that uses “propaganda techniques perfected by Dr. Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi minister of information.” Searching through two years of Washington Post articles, media writer Eric Boehlert could find just one profile of a progressive blogger. The article — “The Left, Online and Outraged” — portrays My Left Wing blogger Maryscott O’Conner as “a Bush-hating lunatic,” using such key phrases as “angry,” “rage,” “fury,” “angriest,” “outrage,” “crude,” “loud,” “crass,” “inflammatory,” “attack.” As Boehlert notes, the Post’s profile of prominent conservative blogger Michelle Malkin was “a Valentine’s Day week mash note, presenting Malkin as a pugnacious, on-the-rise pundit who has her liberal critics up in arms.” In reality though, the image of progressive bloggers as “unhinged,” as Malkin describes them, is just a myth. The make up and politics of the netroots are actually quite mainstream.

read more at The Center for American Progress

from FreePress.net

Over 95 percent of comments filed at agency demand a free and open Internet

WASHINGTON — Tens of thousands of public comments supporting Net Neutrality flooded the Federal Communications Commission before the close of the agency’s official inquiry yesterday. In a landslide, well over 95 percent of the comments called for rules that prohibit phone and cable companies from discriminating against Web sites or services.

People from different backgrounds, living in every corner of the country, demand this basic Internet freedom. Internet users from all 435 congressional districts used SavetheInternet.com’s online tools to send personal messages to the FCC.

“I am living the American dream because of Network Neutrality — my games have been used in thousands of schools all over the world,” says Karen Chun, a single mother and owner of a successful online educational games business. “Without Net Neutrality, my little Web site would have been consigned to oblivion because I wouldn’t have been able to pay the fees the ISPs want to charge.”

Net Neutrality supporters include a broad range of small business owners, students, churchgoers, bloggers, political candidates, educators and activists who say that protecting Net Neutrality is fundamental to their family life, work and interests.

“In rural America, the Internet is very important in staying informed,” wrote Charles and Carol Swigart of Huntingdon, Pa. “We read several national newspapers every day to get the news our local paper does not thoroughly cover. All persons who publish on the Internet should have an equal opportunity to have their voices heard.”

Kelly Jones of Portland, Ore., told the FCC that “corporations are not, and have never been, qualified as gatekeepers to American communication and growth. If the FCC believes in true democracy, it must ensure that broadband providers do not block, interfere with or discriminate against any lawful Internet traffic based on its ownership, source or destination.”

read more at Free Press.net

you can also hear an interview about net neutrality and radio diversity in the July 2, 2007 edition of Blue Herald Radio.

I saw Montgomery-Gentry a couple of years ago, just as this song was headed to number 1 on the national charts. They absolutely blew the roof off the dump! - JS

from The ASSOCIATED PRESS

PEORIA, Ill. (AP) — Retired Gen. Wayne Downing, one of President Bush’s key counterterrorism advisers after the Sept. 11 attacks, has died. He was 67.

The four’star general died early Wednesday at Proctor Hospital in Peoria, where he grew up.

Peoria County Coroner Johnna Inbagersoll said Downing was admitted to the hospital Monday, suffering from bacterial meningitis and multiple myeloma, a form of cancer.

The West Point graduate retired in 1996 after 34 years in the military, ending his career as head of all U.S. special operations forces. In that position, he commanded more than 47,000 soldiers, including the Army’s Green Berets and Navy’s SEALs.

Shortly after retiring, Downing led a 40-person presidential task force that investigated a 1996 attack that killed 19 Americans at Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, making recommendations on how to better protect Americans abroad.

During Operation Desert Storm in 1991, Downing commanded a joint task force of 1,200 U.S. special forces that halted Iraq’s SCUD missile attacks on Israel and eased overall missile threats in the war zone.

Downing, a military analyst for MSNBC, received the U.S. Military Academy’s distinguished graduate award in 2006.

“His reputation was that of a smart, decisive, forceful and caring leader, known in particular for his unwavering determination to accomplish any mission assigned and provide his soldiers the best possible support,” the academy wrote in bestowing the honor.

Downing had served as distinguished chair of the military’s academy’s Combatting Terrorism Center since 2003, and conducted leadership seminars as a visiting faculty member at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business.

Sorry, not buying it. Jury is still out.

BAGHDAD - The U.S. command announced on Wednesday the arrest of an al-Qaida leader it said served as the link between the organization’s command in Iraq and Osama bin Laden’s inner circle, enabling it to wield considerable influence over the Iraqi group.

The announcement was made as the White House steps up efforts to link the war in Iraq to the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks, with a growing number of Americans opposing the Iraq conflict. Some independent analysts question the extent of al-Qaida’s role in Iraq.

Khaled Abdul-Fattah Dawoud Mahmoud al-Mashhadani was the highest-ranking Iraqi in the al-Qaida in Iraq leadership when he was captured July 4 in Mosul, U.S. military spokesman Brig. Gen. Kevin Bergner said.

Bergner told reporters that al-Mashhadani carried messages from bin Laden, and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahri, to the Egyptian-born head of al-Qaida in Iraq, Abu Ayyub al-Masri.

“There is a clear connection between al-Qaida in Iraq and al-Qaida senior leadership outside Iraq,” Bergner said.

More at YahooNews

R.I.P. Capt. Maria Ines Ortiz

Capt. Maria Ines Ortiz had a smile that lighted up the hallways in every hospital where she worked, from Aberdeen to Walter Reed to Iraq.

When a patient needed extra care, the Army nurse would stay late. If a colleague was feeling blue, she was there.

Ortiz, 40, was killed last week by a mortar attack in the Green Zone in Baghdad. The Edgewood, Md., resident is the first Army nurse killed in combat since the Vietnam War, Maj. Gen. Gale Pollock, the Army’s acting surgeon general, said in an interview yesterday.

“Having one of the family go down is very, very hard,” said Pollock, who also is a nurse. “You feel like a piece of your heart is gone.”

Ortiz was returning from physical training July 10 when she was caught outside by a barrage of mortar shells. She was killed by shrapnel.

“If there was such a thing as the jewel of the clinic, she was the jewel,” said Renee Smith, who worked with Ortiz at an Army health clinic at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland. “Her work wasn’t finished until everybody was cared for.”

Ortiz’s death has hit hard at Aberdeen, where she served as chief nurse at the Kirk U.S. Army Health Clinic for 18 months before going to Iraq last fall. Many broke down in tears when the clinic commander called everyone together and told the news.

“It really took everybody by surprise,” Smith said. “God, it’s a great loss.”

Patients who knew Ortiz have “run in here in disbelief,” said Maj. Kathy Presper, chief of medical management at Kirk. “She was dedicated, a step-up-to-the-plate type person.”

Read more »

An oil rich nation……. yet we sit on our hands here in the U.S. when it comes to developing alternative energy sources. Go figure……..

From Gasworld:

A world class, multi-million riyal research centre for renewable energy has been set up in Saudi Arabia and will seek to empower the country, to play the role of world energy leader for future years.

The centre is housed at the Dhahran-based King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals (KFUPM) and is currently working on resource mobilisation before its leading research activities begin in earnest next year.

S. U. Rahman, interim director of the Centre of Research Excellence in Renewable Energy (CoRE-RE) at KFUPM, reportedly said there is evidence of ample interest in alternative fuels in Saudi Arabia, including the generation and use of hydrogen and solar energy as an alternative to fossil fuels.

He commented, “Moreover, it is high time to pursue intensive studies and research in the field of renewable energy as the Kingdom lags behind in this area.”

The centre has set up different divisions for research on hydrogen, methanol and fuel cell, solar and wind energy, advanced energy storage systems, electrical infrastructure and control systems, and the economics of renewable energy.

Rahman also indicated that the Ministry of Higher Education has supported the initiative with a mandate to pursue research programs in the field of renewable energy.

By Ishani Ganguli

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Pilar Albarado spent five months after September 11, 2001, cleaning pulverized building material from apartment buildings and offices near the site of the World Trade Center. A chronic cough came two years later, and she is also battling asthma, memory loss and acid reflux.

Only now, almost six years after the attacks, is the extent of the medical toll on firefighters, police and others who worked on the cleanup coming to light, along with questions about how much the government knew of the danger.

Albarado, 44, cannot work because of her medical problems. Her acid reflux is so bad she cannot eat most foods.

She is being treated at the recently opened World Trade Center health clinic at Bellevue Hospital, but she said the medicines they give her do little to help.

“Our problems will be with us for life,” she said during a protest outside congressional offices in June. “I will never be the same.”

SICKENING DUST

Democrats in Congress say Albarado is one of thousands of people endangered when the Bush Administration knowingly played down the risks posed by the dust, which contained asbestos, lead and other contaminants.

Inhalation of dust-laden air has been implicated in at least two deaths — from lung inflammation and scarring — and connected to the respiratory illnesses and even cancers of thousands working and living within miles of Ground Zero, according to medical studies.

Mount Sinai Medical Center researchers found 69 percent of the nearly 10,000 first responders they examined had new or worsened lung problems after September 11, while doctors at New York University School of Medicine documented these problems in lower Manhattan residents.

More at Reuters

I’d like to see this a-hole rot in jail.

By HANK KURZ Jr.
AP Sports Writer

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — NFL star Michael Vick was indicted by a federal grand jury Tuesday on charges of sponsoring a dogfighting operation so grisly the losers either died in the pit or sometimes were electrocuted, drowned, hanged or shot.

The Atlanta Falcons quarterback and three others were charged with competitive dogfighting, procuring and training pit bulls for fighting and conducting the enterprise across state lines.

The operation was named “Bad Newz Kennels,” according to the indictment, and the dogs were housed, trained and fought at a property owned by Vick in Surry County, Va.

The 18-page federal indictment, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, alleges the 27-year-old Vick and his co-defendants began the dogfighting operation in early 2001, the former Virginia Tech star’s rookie year with the Falcons.

The indictment states that dogs fought to the death - or close to it.

More at the AP

(Please see poll in sidebar)

Vitter quietly returns to Capitol Hill

Senator’s wife said she has forgiven husband’s role with escort service

Emerging from a week of seclusion and scandal linking him to a Washington escort service, Sen. David Vitter, R-La., returned to his duties in on Capitol Hill Washington, Tuesday, sitting on a hearing of the Senate Commerce subcommittee on Air Operations.

WASHINGTON - Louisiana Sen. David Vitter returned to the Capitol Tuesday, apologizing privately to GOP colleagues but refusing to take reporters’ questions about a sex scandal that sent him into seclusion for a week.

The first-term Republican said he wanted to resume his normal Senate schedule, but that proved difficult as news crews camped outside his office and chased him down hallways.

In a private weekly luncheon for Republican senators in the Capitol, Vitter briefly spoke and received a round of applause audible outside the room. Vitter told his colleagues he was sorry for the trouble he had caused them, and thanked them for their messages of support, said a senator who heard the speech and described it on background because of the private nature of the luncheons.
[...]

When Vitter left, while the hearing continued, reporters chased him down a hallway until he turned and calmly addressed them. He said he and his wife already had made “very straightforward statements about all of this. And I look forward today to being back at work, really focused on a lot of important issues for the people of Louisiana, like what we were discussing in the committee hearing.”

MSNBC.com

But of course he will. I doubt Murdoch would have went through all the trouble without some knowledge his desire to eventually control all information was in the bag.

A right-leaning Supreme Court and a FOX News stranglehold on information… can you say “GAME OVER”?

Dow Jones board signs off on sale to Murdoch

$5 billion deal still needs to overcome Bancroft family opposition

Rupert Murdoch’s media empire News Corp. has reportedly reached a tentative agreement to buy Dow Jones & Co., the publisher of The Wall Street Journal.

NEW YORK - The fate of Dow Jones & Co. now rests with the Bancroft family, the company’s longtime controlling shareholders, who must decide whether to sell the publisher of The Wall Street Journal to Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., a global media conglomerate that owns Twentieth Century Fox and the Fox News Channel.

The board of Dow Jones said late Tuesday it was ready to sign off on Murdoch’s proposal to buy the company for $5 billion. However, the key remains with the Bancroft family, whose three dozen members have been deeply divided over whether to sell to Murdoch. The are expected to meet Monday to discuss the deal.
[...]

If the Bancrofts do sink the deal, it would surely result in a sharp drop in Dow Jones shares and the likelihood of shareholder lawsuits.
[...]

Family members have been concerned about the potential of the Journal’s coverage to be affected by corporate interests, and they initially rebuffed Murdoch’s offer, only to reconsider later. They insisted on, and received, a commitment to create an oversight board which must approve the hiring or firing of top editors at the Journal.

MSNBC.com

By Neil Dennis
From Financial Times:

The dollar wilted against other leading currencies on Wednesday as financial markets were rocked again by fears over subprime mortgages.

Asian and European equity markets slumped, while the flight to safety lifted government bonds after Bear Stearns, the US investment bank, declared that its two subprime-focused hedge funds were “virtually worthless”.

The dollar hit a new low of $1.3833 against the euro, and a new 26-year trough against the pound at $2.0548.

But few investors were interested in pushing the currency too low ahead of an important day for US data and central banker testimony. Consumer price inflation is due later in the session and is forecast to increase modestly after a rise in petrol prices. Meanwhile, Ben Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve is expected to reiterate concerns over lingering inflation pressure.

And from Reuters:

Gold gained on Wednesday as the dollar tumbled to a record low against the euro, but dealers are cautious ahead of a testimony by U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke.

Silver and platinum also rose. Tokyo gold futures rebounded to track a firm cash market, while the newly launched “mini” gold contracts saw a decline in turnover.

Spot gold hit an intraday high of $667.10 an ounce, not far from last week’s five-week high of $669.05, before dipping to $666.00/666.60, still higher than $664.60/665.40 late in New York on Tuesday.

“I think there has been a little bit of improvement in investor interest in gold. I certainly think the weakening in the U.S. dollar has been a factor in that,” said David Moore, a commodity strategist at the Commonwealth Bank of Australia in Sydney.

“Depending on what happens to the U.S. dollar, it would be possible for gold to move in above $670 an ounce in the near term,” said Moore, who pegged the downside at $660.