The chairman of the House Judiciary Committee plans to unveil a new proposal this week to crack down on steroid use in sports, another sign of the growing determination by Congress to impose tougher testing standards and penalties on pro sports.

Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., told USA TODAY he's co-authoring the bill with Rep. John Conyers (news, bio, voting record), the top Judiciary Committee Democrat from Michigan. It would put the Justice Department in charge of developing "minimum standards" for testing and penalties. Participation in the program would be voluntary, but Sensenbrenner says there will be "incentives" to encourage pro sports leagues to sign up.

How this is going to work is beyond me in any way shape or form. They want to create a penalty system for baseball? How does this serve ANY governmental interest? If it were for criminal penalties, they would not be able to do it because that would create an "anti-protected" class (sports people) violating due process. Civil penalties? On what justification? And who is going to be responsible for this? Justice? That's not going to work. The government will have a "competative sports compliance agency?"

Will someone please get rid of this piece of crap?

Lawmakers seek far harsher penalties for steroids users - Yahoo! News

"And so many of the people in the arena here, you
know, were underprivileged anyway, so this--this (she
chuckles slightly) is working very well for them."

WHAT???

Barbara Bush: Things Working Out 'Very Well' for Poor Evacuees from New Orleans

Rehnquist served on the Supreme Court for thirty-three years and as chief justice for nineteen. Yet no opinion comes to mind which will be remembered as brilliant, innovative, or memorable. He will be remembered not for the quality of his opinions but rather for the outcomes decided by his votes, especially Bush v. Gore, in which he accepted an Equal Protection claim that was totally inconsistent with his prior views on that clause. He will also be remembered as a Chief Justice who fought for the independence and authority of the judiciary. This is his only positive contribution to an otherwise regressive career.

He's not pulling any punches. Painful.

The Blog | Alan Dershowitz: Telling the Truth About Chief Justice Rehnquist | The Huffington Post

The Senate is expected to begin his confirmation hearings as chief justice either Thursday or next Monday. The opening of Roberts' previously scheduled confirmation hearings, for the position of associate justice, initially was to be Tuesday, but that was canceled until after Rehnquist's funeral on Wednesday.

Not unexpected.

Bush Nominates Roberts for Chief Justice

Johnny White's is famous for never closing, even during a hurricane. The doors don't even have locks.

Since the storm, it has become more than a bar. Along with the warm beer and shots, the bartenders passed out scrounged military Meals Ready to Eat and bottled water to the people who drive the mule carts, bus the tables and hawk the T-shirts that keep the Quarter's economy humming.

"It's our community center," said Marcie Ramsey, 33, whom Katrina promoted from graveyard shift bartender to acting manager.

Amazing! Behold the power of beer!

French Quarter Holdouts Create 'Tribes'

In comments on Thursday,
President George W. Bush said, "I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees."

But Louisiana State University engineer Joseph Suhayda and others have warned for years that defenses could fail. In 2002, the New Orleans Times Picayune published a five-part series on "The Big One" examining what might happen if they did.

This sounds just like what he said after 9/11. No one considered them hi-jacking planes and... Yes, all kinds of people did. The only ones who didn't seem to consider this were W and his people.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, won't get fooled again? Not even Crawford wants this fool back.

Models predicted New Orleans disaster, experts say

"I am absolutely disgusted. After the tsunami our people, even the ones who lost everything, wanted to help the others who were suffering," said Sajeewa Chinthaka, 36, as he watched a cricket match in Colombo, Sri Lanka.

"Not a single tourist caught in the tsunami was mugged. Now with all this happening in the U.S. we can easily see where the civilized part of the world's population is."

Ouch. That hurts, but is also on the mark.

World stunned as US struggles with Katrina - Yahoo! News

Michael Brown also agreed with other public officials that the death toll in the city could reach into the thousands.

"Unfortunately, that's going to be attributable a lot to people who did not heed the advance warnings," Brown told CNN.

Unbelievable. People who couldn't get out because they didn't have the money to get out are at fault because they didn't listen to the evacuation order? Someone please fire this asshole. Better yet, air drop him in the middle of New Orleans with no food, water, money or ammo, and see whether he gets out.

CNN.com - FEMA chief: Victims bear some responsibility - Sep 1, 2005

I just got home from work a few minutes ago and got my mail on the way in. In my mailbox I found an Army recuruitment letter asking me if I wanted more information on signing up.

Now I'm sure I got this because of the signup information when I downloaded America's Army back in 2001, but part of that was a survey that asked things like age, etc. They should have been able to connect that back to my Selective Service registration, or even when I went in looking at the reserves just getting out of high school.

Where all of this is going is, if the Army is so hard up that they're looking for out of shape guys closer to 40 than 30 with dependants and jobs, then we're in a hell of a lot more trouble than they've been saying publically. This is NOT a good indicator. Either that that hard up, or they're paying no attention to the demographics they collected. They're also ignoring the fact that I haven't played the game in 4 years. Any way I slice it, this is not a good sign.

And oh yeah, I'm leftist pinko scum with no respect for authority. I don't think I'm really the guy they want in any case.

Only 20 to 25 percent of Americans are scientifically savvy and alert. Most of the rest don't have a clue.

At a time when science permeates debates on everything from global warming to stem cell research, people's inability to understand basic scientific concepts undermines their ability to take part in the democratic process.

American adults in general do not understand what molecules are (other than that they are really small). Fewer than a third can identify DNA as a key to heredity. Only about 10 percent know what radiation is. One adult American in five thinks the Sun revolves around the Earth, an idea science had abandoned by the 17th century.

Also scary from the article, "Lately, people who advocate the teaching of evolution have been citing Dr. Miller's ideas on what factors are correlated with adherence to creationism and rejection of Darwinian theories. In general, he says, these fundamentalist views are most common among people who are not well educated and who "work in jobs that are evaporating fast with competition around the world."

Scientific Savvy? In US, Not Much