5 Mos. In Prison For Terrorizing Gay Neighbors

A British court has sentenced a woman to 150 days behind bars and her daughter to 24-months of supervised probation for a terror campaign against the gay couple who lived next door.The court was told that the pair began harassing Michael Harris and Shires Crichton, of Kingston, Kent, after the couple sided with another neighbor in a dispute.From March until May 2007 Karen Reeves, 44, and Christie Myles, 22, yelled homophobic remarks at the couple and on one occasion Reeves drove her car at one of the men.”Although there was no evidence of violence, the psychological affect on the victims has been far reaching,” judge Roger Scrase told Reeves during her sentencing.”In your case there are strong aggravating factors. Those factors are that you made homophobic gestures and remarks over an extended period and you showed no remorse.”

‘Untouchable’ woman dies after Indian medics refuse treatment from PhysOrg.com
An “untouchable” woman who gave birth outside an Indian hospital because doctors would not treat her died Thursday, a day after her baby, officials admitted.
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Anglican Church Issues Warning Over Controversial South American Bishop

(Vancouver, British Columbia) A controversial Anglican leader from South America arrived in Canada on Wednesday, over the objections of the Anglican Church of Canada.The visit by Bishop Greg Venables threatens to further divide Anglicans in this country, where several congregations have split with the Canadian church to join Venables’ more conservative Buenos Aires-based diocese.Eleven more clergy members of the Anglican diocese of New Westminster handed in their resignations this week, saying they will continue under Venables’ jurisdiction.Venables, who is scheduled to speak at a weekend conference of the conservative Anglican Network of Canada, is “breaking the rules of the church” with his visit, says a church official.Archdeacon Paul Feheley, principal secretary to Archbishop Fred Hiltz, the head of the Anglican Church of Canada, said Venables shouldn’t be intervening in Canadian affairs.“Our point would be, you’re the one who’s coming into our territory. You’re the one breaking the traditions of the church. I think the onus is on him to call us,” Feheley told The Canadian Press.Hiltz had asked him to stay away, saying his visit will further harm the already tense relations between the Anglican church and Anglican Network of Canada.

The democratic party is polling tomorrow in Pennsylvania. The conventional wisdom says that there is a number of percentage points reflecting Clinton’s expected win above which this would truly count as a win for her, and below which it could be perceived as a victory for Obama. If Obama “wins” in this election, things could change quickly with Clinton being seen as heading for the door. However, a win is a win, and even a small margin for Clinton may be seen by the Clinton campaign as, well, what it would be, to be fair: Winning Pennsylvania. Were Obama to actually, numerically, win the primary, that would be a huge victory for him.Well, I’ve analyzed the data and I have a prediction or two to make. Continue reading What is going to happen in Pennsylvania tomorrow? →

The Oklahoma City bombing was a terrorist attack on April 19, 1995 aimed at the U.S. government in which the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building was bombed in an office complex in downtown Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. The attack claimed 168 lives and left over 800 injured. Until the September 11, 2001 attacks, it was the deadliest act of terrorism on U.S. soil….The United States was represented by a team of prosecutors, led by Joseph Hartzler. In his opening statement, Hartzler outlined McVeigh’s motivations and the evidence against him. McVeigh’s motivation, he said, was hatred of the government, which began during his tenure in the Army as he read The Turner Diaries, and grew through the increase in taxes and the passage of the Brady Bill, and grew further with the Waco and Ruby Ridge incidents. The prosecution called 137 witnesses, including Michael Fortier, Michael’s wife Lori Fortier, and McVeigh’s sister, Jennifer McVeigh, all of whom testified on McVeigh’s hatred of the government and demonstrated desire to take militant action against it.*

Apparently, this did not used to be true. TV news viewers in the past did not pick their news station in a way that correlated with party affiliation in the US. But now, increasingly so, they do.This is from a study from the University of Georgia, Athens, based on data from the Pew Center for the People and the Press from 1998 to 2006. In 1998, Fox News was watched byt 18 percent of Democrats and 14 percent of Republicans. But in 2006, 26 percent of Republicans watched Fox, compared to 19 percent of Democrats.What I want to know is, why are these Democrats still watching Fox News?The rest of the findings, from a UGA press release: Continue reading TV News Audiences Are Split Along Party Lines →

Pangea Day is May 10th. Everybody is going to get together and hold hands to bring the world together. We’ll call it “Hands Across the Mid Ocean Ridges…”Well, OK, that may not work, but there will be events of interest. Today we have a little pre-Pangea Day warm up, with a selection of national anthems sung by one country for another country. Continue reading Pangea Day Songs →

It had been assumed that Hillary Clinton would do very well in Pennsylvania against Barack Obama, continuing the relative ambiguity of which candidate should be chosen at the Democratic National Convention. However, recent polls show that Obama is closing the lead, and is now probably well within 10 percentage points of Clinton, with about 10 percent of polled voters undecided. The Real Clear Politics average of seven recent pols shows the spread at 7.8 percent. Most important, though, is a huge shift from 20 percent difference prior to late March to a 10 percent difference today. It is not clear that the difference is narrowing, but it is clear that it has suddenly gotten narrow.The word is that the two candidates are slogging it out in ad space, each spending millions and coming up with region-specific multiple ads. Here are a couple of examples: Continue reading Stunning Politics (Adult Content) →

Hat Tip Gwenny Todd

Yesterday it was announced that 4000 American Soldiers had been killed, in total, in Iraq. I am not sure if this counts contract soldiers (such as Blackwater; Added: See notes below. It does not.), and I do not know if it includes American deaths since the very beginning of Iraq involvement or since the current invasion (though I think the latter). It does not matter too much, as the number 4000 is a fairly arbitrary thing … if we used a numbering system other than base-10, some other number would feel like a milestone. But this does give us an order of magnitude of the sense of the size of the conflict.This number also means less in isolation than it would in the broader context of “casualties” estimates. We Americans have all had the experience of seeing an increasingly large number of (mostly) men on the street, in restaurants, wherever, in wheelchairs missing lower limbs, or otherwise maimed, and we have to assume that this is part of the conflict as well.It happens that over the last few days I’ve also been reading about other wars and conflicts, and I have been thinking about these numbers in a broader conflict. I have nothing wise or though provoking to say to you about this at this time, but I do think a look at numbers can be interesting. One could say that numbers mean nothing, and that it is the individual losses … to families and loved ones that matter. But the numbers to mean something, in fact, they mean a lot of things. So I’ve put some numbers together in one place for you to look at, be horrified by, to think about. Continue reading 4000 →

Or at least, as Mark Twain said, “… it rhymes.”When George Bush invaded Iraq, I was immediately reminded of Julian the Apostate. I’ve read about Julian the Apostate, and I can tell you, George Bush is not Julian the Apostate. But, Julian died during his ill fated campaign in the region, so that is why I was reminded.(If you want read a cool book have a look at Julian: A Novel, by Gore Vidal.)Anyway, Julian was not the only ancient figure to invade Iraq with dire consequences, as Manchester Historian Gareth Sampson describes. According to Samson, Continue reading War in Iraq: History Repeats Itself →