WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Supreme Court agreed Monday to consider whether the Bush administration must regulate carbon dioxide to combat global warming, setting up what could be one of the court's most important decisions on the environment.

The decision means the court will address whether the administration's decision to rely on voluntary measures to combat climate change are legal under federal clean air laws.

"This is the whole ball of wax. This will determine whether the Environmental Protection Agency is to regulate greenhouse gases from cars and whether EPA can regulate carbon dioxide from power plants," said David Bookbinder, an attorney for the Sierra Club.

Bookbinder said if the court upholds the administration's argument it also could jeopardize plans by California and 10 other states, including most of the Northeast, to require reductions in carbon dioxide emissions from motor vehicles.

There was no immediate comment from either the EPA or White House on the court's action.

"Fundamentally, we don't think carbon dioxide is a pollutant, and so we don't think these attempts are a good idea," said John Felmy, chief economist of the American Petroleum Institute, a trade group representing oil and gas producers.

If the Supreme Court agrees with the plantiffs, I will simultaneously have a stroke and heart attack. Bush has two stooges on the Court -- how can we possibly expect them to rule against him? Moreover, who in their right mind would expect him to rule against the oil and gas lobbyists? This is a simple mathematical identity with environmentalists (and anyone with a brain) on the losing side.

-janelane, CO2 pessimist

CNN.com - Supreme Court takes on global warming - Jun 26, 2006

Senator Coburn told me that he's not anti-birth-control: "I'm not a no-condom person. I prescribe tons of birth control products. But that's only one-half of the issue. The other half is preventing S.T.D.'s." This is not the message of the federal abstinence initiative, however. The emphasis there is squarely on promoting a moral framework that puts sexuality in a particular place. As the 2007 federal guidelines for program financing state, "It is required that the abstinence education curriculum teaches that a mutually faithful monogamous relationship in the context of marriage is the expected standard of human sexual activity."

Read and be warned.

-janelane, SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE

Contra-Contraception - New York Times

"There's no shock absorber left," says Gal Luft, executive director of the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security. "That leaves us with zero options when it comes to leverage against these oil producers. Why do you think Hugo Chavez is so emboldened? Why do you think Ahmadinejad is saying, 'Go ahead, make my day?' "

Clearly, becoming less dependent on foreign sources should be among the West's - and most especially America's - most urgent priorities. But not in the way that President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney seem to prefer, which is to try to drill our way out of dependency - an utterly impossible task for a country that uses one-fourth of the world's oil while possessing only 3 percent of its reserves, and whose once-abundant supplies of natural gas are now severely stressed. A much better answer would be a national commitment to more efficient vehicles and to the rapid deployment of new energy sources like biofuels.

America cannot win President Bush's much-vaunted war on terrorism as long as it is sending billions of dollars abroad for oil purchases every day. It cannot establish democracy in the Middle East because governments rich in oil revenue do not want democracy. And it will never have the geopolitical leverage it needs as long as it is dependent on unstable foreign sources for fuel.

If any of you are still wondering about the validity of the Bush-Cheney energy policy, this article sums the inanity of it up nicely.

-janelane, energy goddess

Energy Impasse - New York Times

Its worse than we could have ever imagined.

Legal experts consider the 55-year-old Alito so ideologically similar to Justice Antonin Scalia that he has earned the nickname "Scalito."

In 1991, in one of his more well-known decisions, he was the only dissenting voice in a 3rd Circuit ruling striking down a Pennsylvania law that required women to notify their husbands if they planned to get an abortion.

He also wrote the opinion in 1999 in a case that said a Christmas display on city property did not violate separation of church and state doctrines because it included a large plastic Santa Claus as well as religious symbols.

Oh, wait, no...that's about what I imagined.

Regrettably, I was not able to meme the original version of this story in which poll results about American's desires for the next justice were included. 46% said that overturning Roe V Wade was a bad idea. Here's a guy that thinks Mormons are living the good life, and he can't possibly represent the 46% of people who don't want to chuck Roe V Wade.

Hey...isn't that figure 5 percentage points higher than Bush's approval rating?

-janelane, heading for the hills

CNN.com - Bush nominates Alito to Supreme Court - Oct 31, 2005

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A Texas grand jury on Wednesday charged Rep. Tom DeLay and two political associates with conspiracy in a campaign finance scheme, forcing the House majority leader to temporarily relinquish his post.

DeLay, 58, was accused of a criminal conspiracy along with two associates, John Colyandro, former executive director of a Texas political action committee formed by DeLay, and Jim Ellis, who heads DeLay's national political committee.

CNN actually has the 4-page indictment posted on their webpage. Its pretty staggering to see all of the companies that could get hell for being part of the scandal. I hope that C-SPAN broadcasts a roast of DeLay similar to Brown's yesterday. If you haven't, GET THE TRANSCRIPT...its fucking hilarious to watch Republicans pick apart Brown on the stand.

Grr...lack of a memestreams bookmarklet is compelling me to include the link here instead of the title.

-janelane, damning Texas Republicans since 2000.

NEW YORK (CNN) -- Veteran newsman Peter Jennings was remembered Monday as an outstanding journalist, a hard worker and "a man of conscience and integrity."

The longtime anchor of ABC "World News Tonight" died Sunday, some four months after he announced on the air that he had been diagnosed with lung cancer.

Jennings was 67.

His presence in our lives has already been missed since stepping down from the Evening News. It is a terrible tragedy that such a venerable life has been prematurely extinguished.

-janelane, somberly

CNN.com - Peter Jennings dies of lung cancer - Aug 8, 2005

CAMDEN, New Jersey (AP) -- As authorities began investigating why police failed to search a car trunk where three missing boys were found dead, the father of one of the children said Sunday he could not understand how they died so close to home.

Anibal Cruz, 38, said the family assumed that police looked in the trunk of the car that was parked just steps from where the boys were last seen playing.
///
Officials said the boys suffocated after climbing into the trunk on their own. Their bodies were found by David Agosto, whose 6-year-old son Daniel had gone missing along with 5-year-old Jesstin Pagan and 11-year-old Anibal Cruz.

How about filing charges against the parents for not noticing the children disappeared out of their own yard and failing themselves to check inside the car parked in the yard?

Tip #104: Parents -} Blame yourselves!

-janelane

CNN.com - Dad: 'Maybe they should have looked in the trunk' - Jun 27, 2005

Not fucking guilty on all counts. I hate celebrities, jurors, and all the fucking fans supporting that pedophile.

For crying out loud, surely Michael Jackson is guilty of ONE STINKING COUNT. I expected he'd get off the hardcore, jail-time counts, but fuckin-A!

Arg.

-janelane

LONDON, England -- A British man wanted in the United States for allegedly carrying out "the biggest military computer hack of all time" has been granted bail.

Gary McKinnon, 39, of north London faces extradition over claims he gained illegal access and made alterations to 53 U.S. military and NASA computers over a 12-month period from 2001 to 2002.

Holy shit! This guy looks like Sideshow Bob!

And a little like Satan...

-janelane

CNN.com - 'Superhacker' faces extradition - Jun 8, 2005

From the front page of CNN when this was memed:

] The bill under threat of veto would extend funding to research on
] embryonic stem cell lines that did not exist in 2001, when Bush
] limited funding to lines in existence at the time. Bush said he
] would not allow "taxpayers' money to promote science which
] destroys life in order to save life."

I see absolutely no difference between that line of reasoning and the one purported for the War on Terror. Sacrificing lives to save lives is what being a World Power is all about as Bush reminds us time and time again when he cuts social programs to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

It pisses me off when people use their morality to whatever conflicting ends it suits them. Fucking hypocrite.

-janelane

CNN.com - House passes embryonic stem cell bill - May 24, 2005