The most explosive question about the Taliban resurgence here along the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan is this: Have Pakistani intelligence agencies been promoting the Islamic insurgency?
...
Hamid Gul, the former director general of Pakistani intelligence, remains a public and unapologetic supporter of the Taliban, visiting madrasas and speaking in support of jihad at graduation ceremonies.

Afghan intelligence officials recently produced a captured insurgent who said Mr. Gul facilitated his training and logistics through an office in the Pakistani town of Nowshera, in the North-West Frontier Province, west of the capital, Islamabad.

NATO and American officials in Afghanistan say there is also evidence of support from current midlevel Pakistani intelligence officials. Just how far up that support reaches remains in dispute.

At Border, Signs of Pakistani Role in Taliban Surge - New York Times

My computer is my most private possession. I have other things that are more dear, but no one item could tell you more about me than this machine.

Yet, a rash of recent court decisions says the Constitution may not be enough to protect my laptop from arbitrary, suspicionless and warrantless examination by the police.

Wired News: Computer Privacy in Distress

This alarm clock was covered on MemeStreams back when it was a prototype. Now its a product you can order! I think if I had this it would roll under my bed and it would be a huge pain to get it out.

The alarm clock that runs away and hides when you don't wake up. Clocky gives you one chance to get up. But if you snooze, Clocky will jump off of your nightstand and wheel around your room looking for a place to hide. Clocky is kind of like a misbehaving pet, only he will get up at the right time.

Clocky is now available for sale!

A few weeks ago I posted this link, which had made BoingBoing and Interesting People. It said:

Grand Canyon National Park is not permitted to give an official estimate of the geologic age of its principal feature, due to pressure from Bush administration appointees.

I very quickly had to update the post, as this the national park service had a clear reference to the age of the Canyon on their web page. This story has more detail about the apparent lie.

PEER is an anti-Bush, anti-religion liberal activist watchdog group in search of demons to exorcise and dragons to slay. On one level, that’s how the system works in a free society, and there are plenty of pro-Bush, pro-religion conservative activist watchdog groups who do the same thing on the other side. Maybe in a Hegelian process of thesis-antithesis-synthesis we find truth that way; at least at the level of talk radio. But journalistic standards and scholarly ethics still hold sway at all levels of discourse that matter, and to that end I believe we were duped by an activist group who at the very least exaggerated a claim and published it in order to gain notoriety for itself, or worse, simply made it up.

eSkeptic: There IS such a thing as an anti-christian agenda

Colbert on O'Reilly:

O'Reilly on Colbert:

Colbert meets O'Reilly

Two months after he was hit repeatedly with a Taser by university police, Mostafa Tabatabainejad has filed a civil rights lawsuit against UCLA and university police saying he "suffered an unprovoked act of police brutality."

This will take years to work itself out.

Student files lawsuit over Taser use

This is your country on Medicare and Social Security.

The ratio of federal debt held by the public to GDP would climb from 37 percent currently to roughly 100 percent in 2030 and would continue to grow exponentially after that. The only time in U.S. history that the debt-to-GDP ratio has been in the neighborhood of 100 percent was during World War II. People at that time understood the situation to be temporary and expected deficits and the debt-to-GDP ratio to fall rapidly after the war, as in fact they did. In contrast, under the scenario I have been discussing, the debt-to-GDP ratio would rise far into the future at an accelerating rate. Ultimately, this expansion of debt would spark a fiscal crisis, which could be addressed only by very sharp spending cuts or tax increases, or both.

There is some very sound advice in here. The following statement seems so logical and obvious that one wonders why the Fed Chief has to say it.

Members of the Congress who put special emphasis on keeping tax rates low must accept that low tax rates can be sustained only if outlays, including those on entitlements, are kept low as well. Likewise, members who favor a more expansive role of the government, including relatively more-generous benefits payments, must recognize the burden imposed by the additional taxes needed to pay for the higher spending, a burden that includes not only the resources transferred from the private sector but also any adverse economic incentives associated with higher tax rates.

Unfortunately, there are a whole lot of people who are living in total denial about this.

Fed chief Bernanke's prepared testimony before Senate - Jan. 18, 2007

The attempt to require political bloggers to register as lobbyists previously reported by MemeStreams has been stripped out of the lobbying reform bill. The vote was 55 to 43 to defeat the provision. All 48 Republicans, as well as 7 Democrats, voted against requiring bloggers to register; all 43 votes in favor of keeping the registration provision were by Democrats.

Slashdot | Bill to Treat Bloggers as Lobbyists Defeated

Several hours into the program, Strange was interviewed and complained that her head hurt.

"They keep telling me that it's the water. That it will tell my head to hurt and then it will make me puke," she said.

"This is what it feels like when you're drowning," responded one of the DJs. "There's a lot of water inside you."

The more I hear about this the more fucked up it sounds.

AP Wire | 01/18/2007 | Family to sue radio station over water death

Brig. Gen. Thomas Hemingway, a legal adviser to the Office of Military Commissions, told reporters that the manual provides for a "clear prohibition of evidence obtained by torture" if it was obtained after December 30, 2005. But if it was obtained before that time, and if the judge determines that it is reliable, it may be admitted, he said.

I gotta tell ya, I'm scratching my head on this one.

Manual lays out rules for Guantanamo trials - CNN.com