Good for the ISRA! Hopefully, there will be more such lawsuits to follow.

Mayor Richard M. Daley is a staunch supporter of gun control, and said he does not know if the Supreme Court decision striking down Washington's handgun ban will affect the Chicago ban.

But the mayor called the ruling "a very frightening decision."

Speaking during a morning event at Navy Pier, Daley said any effort to strike down Chicago's handgun ban would likely increase taxes because of the increased need for police presence. He also says violence sparked by the end of the ban would also increase hospitalizations.

"It is frightening that America loves guns," the mayor said, "and to me, I think this decision really places those who are rich and those are in power, they'll always feel safe. Those who do not have the power do not feel safe, and that's what they're saying. If you're elected officials, you feel safe. You cannot carry a gun into a federal building. You cannot carry a gun into a federal court. So they're setting themselves aside, and really, they're saying to the rest of America that the answer to all the constitutional issues is that we can carry guns. And I just don't understand how they came to this thinking."

My initial thoughts regarding Daley's comments were not safe for work, or home, or most dark alleys, but even he can't ruin my good mood after today's Supreme Court ruling. It's time to pour a tall, cold glass of Weihenstephaner and celebrate.

The Illinois State Rifle Association files a lawsuit to overturn the Chicago handgun ban.

A true Republican, or a true Democrat, is someone who puts their party above their principles and their candidate above their conscience.

But most of us (or at least those of us who live outside the Beltway) aren't like that. We're more like the mad scientist Frankenstein: We'd like to take a piece of this candidate, a touch of that one and a little slice of the one over there, mash it all together and create someone who's lines up perfectly with our values and beliefs.

Which brings me back to John McCain. Like Obama, McCain and I have fundamental differences on a host of important issues. Sure, I disagree with him less than I do with Obama, but is that really the standard we should use in choosing their candidate? Our country isn't a reality show where we simply elect whoever's left after all the backstabbing and lying is finished.

Is it?

Much of the time, it does seem that way.

...keep in mind that just because a party says they stand for something doesn't mean it's true.

After all, the Republicans said they stood for smaller government, but the size of our government grew enormously under a Republican president and a Republican majority in Congress. Democrats said they stood for an end to the war in Iraq, but for better or worse, nearly two years after taking over Congress, they don't even have a timetable for withdrawal.

My point is that actions speak louder than words. The "R" and the "D" don't matter if the people we elect don't follow through on their promises.

Beck: Obama no, McCain maybe

Court: A constitutional right to a gun

Answering a 127-year old constitutional question, the Supreme Court ruled on Thursday that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to have a gun, at least in one’s home. The Court, splitting 5-4, struck down a District of Columbia ban on handgun possession.

Justice Antonin Scalia’s opinion for the majority stressed that the Court was not casting doubt on long-standing bans on gun possession by felons or the mentally retarded, or laws barring guns from schools or government buildings, or laws putting conditions on gun sales.

Supreme Court strikes down a District of Columbia ban on handgun possession

The net's regulators will vote on Thursday to decide if the strict rules on so-called top level domain names, such as .com or .uk, can be relaxed. If approved, it could allow companies to turn their brands into domain names while individuals could also carve out their own corner of the net.

Hundreds of new domain names could be created by the end of the year, rising to thousands in the future. Icann says any string of letters can be registered as a domain, but there will be an independent arbitration process for people with grounds for objection.

".meme"?

Icann & Top Level Domain Names - 'Shake-up' for internet proposed

Most anyone in the free and open source software realm can tell you not only that Linux is better than Windows, but also that it is an optimal alternative to the closed-source and proprietary operating system from Microsoft. Anyone at a Linux-oriented event or group can assure you that you have no need or even legitimate reason to continue using commercial operating systems nowadays.

Indeed, GNU and Linux have radically transformed software development and systems administration in practice and in culture, but to replace Windows broadly, it is essential to accommodate the influx of commercial software refugees.

Above all else, Linux is a paradigm, or a way of doing things; rather than needing to know every detail, users can start using it and getting results by just knowing what to expect. Computer technology grows more sophisticated by the day, and to keep improving free and open source software, we need a sophisticated and flexible educational infrastructure that allows users to reach their desired goals as quickly and as easily as possible.

Linux Community Should Plant Seeds for Consumer Demand

TAKANEZAWA, Japan - Honda's new zero-emission, hydrogen fuel cell car rolled off a Japanese production line Monday and is headed to southern California, where Hollywood is already abuzz over the latest splash in green motoring. The FCX Clarity, which runs on hydrogen and electricity, emits only water and none of the gases believed to induce global warming. It is also two times more energy efficient than a gas-electric hybrid and three times that of a standard gasoline-powered car, the company says.

Honda expects to lease out a "few dozen" units this year and about 200 units within a year. In California, a three-year lease will run $600 a month, which includes maintenance and collision coverage.

Honda rolls out new zero-emission hydrogen fuel cell car

Rupert Murdoch's Fox News television station has been forced to apologise to Barack Obama for the third time in a fortnight after screening a racially tinged caption referring to his wife Michelle as his "baby mama".

The apology comes just over a week after one of Fox's anchormen expressed regret for a comment on the night that Obama won the Democratic nomination. Obama, in a show of affection, lightly touched his fist against Michelle's and the anchorwoman referred to it as a "terrorist fist jab". Previously, a Fox contributor Liz Trotta had to apologise after making a joke about Obama being assassinated.

The trio of apologies is embarrassing for Fox. Murdoch last month praised Obama but stopped short of endorsing him, though his New York Post came out for Obama in January.

Fox forced to apologise to Obama for third time in two weeks

by John Coleman

You may want to give credit where credit is due to Al Gore and his global warming campaign the next time you fill your car with gasoline, because there is a direct connection between Global Warming and four dollar a gallon gas. It is shocking, but true, to learn that the entire Global Warming frenzy is based on the environmentalist’s attack on fossil fuels, particularly gasoline. All this big time science, international meetings, thick research papers, dire threats for the future; all of it, comes down to their claim that the carbon dioxide in the exhaust from your car and in the smoke stacks from our power plants is destroying the climate of planet Earth. What an amazing fraud; what a scam.

My mission, in what is left of a long and exciting lifetime, is to stamp out this Global Warming silliness and let all of us get on with enjoying our lives and loving our planet, Earth.

Global Warming and the Price of a Gallon of Gas

The print ad, which takes up most of a newspaper page, shouts, "The Ocean Is Evaporating!" TV and Internet spots warn that the world's oceans will disappear - in about a billion years. But what appear to be public service announcements this week, delivered with a fake sternness by Mayor Richard W. Meehan, are actually an ad campaign to encourage visits to the resort town.

"We're advising citizens to book their Ocean City getaway now, before the ocean evaporates," Meehan says in the commercials; the image blurs and jumps like an old newsreel. The ads ran Sunday and Monday in TV markets from Richmond to New York. The Internet version is at http://www.morefunhere.com. The print version ran Monday in The Washington Post. The ads are part of a $1 million campaign designed for the Ocean City Department of Tourism by MGH of Owings Mills.

Earlier this year, while searching for ideas, one staffer read about a study in the Monthly Notices of the British Royal Astronomical Society. The study described how, over hundreds of millions of years, the heat of the sun will steadily increase. After about a billion years, the oceans will boil themselves dry, for reasons separate from climate change. A light went on inside creative director John Patterson's head - an enormous, scorching light. If the oceans boil, he figured, that "probably pretty much ruins things" for Ocean City. It was the start of a joke. Meehan said he felt a little funny making such frightening pronouncements in jest. "Was it kind of Orson-Welles-ish? Yeah," he said, adding that the ads have generated mostly positive responses.

Unfortunately, Ocean City's problems are likely to begin long before the oceans disappear. One of the study's authors, Klaus-Peter Schrder of the University of Guanajuato in Mexico, said in an e-mail to The Post that the earth's warming will make the oceans to expand before they boil. That will turn Ocean City into just Ocean, he says "That beach in the advert will disappear long before the 1 billion years are up," he said.

Maryland resort's mock ads warn of ocean evaporation

BMW GINA Light Visionary Model revealed