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Communion rights? There is a lot of controversy regarding communion these days. Seems like the Church wants to hold it hostage in order to get what they want politically regarding abortion. Kerry is criticized for taking it, NJ Gov. McGreevy can't have it. But what about Pols that support the death penalty, shouldn't they abstain too? When it comes to communion, should anyone be getting in line these days?
comment posted at 2:44 PM on May-20-04
comment posted at 3:09 PM on May-20-04

Not exactly renewing my faith in humanity. Evidently even mentioning Maury Povitch on your website will result in receiving hundreds of comments from people who believe they are writing to Maury himself. The results are predictably unpredictable. (NOTE: Have a sense of irony and 20 minutes handy before clicking)
comment posted at 2:35 PM on May-20-04

Sure, you've seen pictures of Meteor Crater, Arizona, but are there any impact craters near you? Probably.
comment posted at 3:16 PM on May-20-04

Poetry isn't free speech for these students. Bill Nevins, a New Mexico high school teacher was fired last year and classes in poetry and the poetry club at Rio Rancho High School were permanently terminated because he refused to censor a student's poetry that was "un-American."
comment posted at 2:51 PM on May-20-04

Why I made that film. The Guardian gets the first interview with the unknown, female, 21-year-old American star of "the most explicit mainstream movie ever" (copyright all newspapers, everywhere).
comment posted at 3:01 PM on May-20-04

Rumsfeld knew. More revelations from Seymour Hersch at The New Yorker.
comment posted at 2:47 PM on May-17-04
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comment posted at 6:17 PM on May-17-04

“Medical Consequences of What Homosexuals Do” (warning: extremely graphic verbal description; for a different perspective, here's a critique on the use of some references). "Homosexuals are sexually troubled people engaging in dangerous activities. Because we care about them and those tempted to join them, it is important that we neither encourage nor legitimize such a destructive lifestyle." Discuss.
comment posted at 3:05 PM on May-14-04

The Wild Divine Project. "Kurt Smith and Corwin Bell have designed a computer game that teaches players to use biofeedback sensors worn on three fingers to help them control various events... By using breathing techniques to stimulate or soothe their biological responses, players can start an onscreen fire, juggle brightly colored balls and direct the flight of birds."
comment posted at 3:19 PM on May-13-04

The Orange jumpsuit, couch potato Al Quida members, flawed timelines, the freepers connection, and the outspoken father. Nicolas Berg conspiracy theories abound on the Internet.
comment posted at 3:15 PM on May-13-04

May 12th is International ME/CFS/Fibromyalgia Awareness Day. If you aren't aware of these afflictions, then it's time to become so. "Fibromyalgia (FM) is an increasingly recognized chronic pain illness which is characterized by widespread musculoskeletal aches, pain and stiffness, soft tissue tenderness, general fatigue and sleep disturbances." The WebMD description. For those who live with chronic fatigue, systemic immunity problems, and long term pain, I think the rest of us, at least, owe our awareness of what these people cope with every day. Again, via the always excellent Watermark, who writes movingly of her relationship with Fibromyalgia.
comment posted at 4:15 PM on May-12-04
comment posted at 5:31 PM on May-12-04

Video Seems to Show Beheading of American in response to the Abu Ghraib torture photos. I wonder if Sen. James Inhofe will continue to be "more outraged by the outrage than we are by the treatment." [more inside, via kos]
comment posted at 12:57 PM on May-11-04
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comment posted at 3:28 PM on May-13-04

To all who wondered about this Man Vs. Grizzy -- the answer needed this grizzly bear suit from ebay . The thread, by the way, was one of the funniest Ask MeFi threads I've ever read. And the bearsuit? Well, that's just crazy-insane.
comment posted at 5:23 PM on May-10-04

The Most Important Press Conference of This (US) Election Cycle! (It's not quite Friday, but it's Flash. Really flash)
comment posted at 3:21 PM on May-6-04

Have You Prayed Today?*
Today is the National Day of Prayer in the US (I had never heard of it). Oliver North!?! is the honorary chairman this year. Here are the President's remarks today. Meanwhile, Larry Flynt is calling for a different sort of prayer today.
*Muslims and Mormons need not apply.
"We're in an election year, and we believe God cares who's in those positions of authority," said Mark Fried, spokesman for the National Day of Prayer Task Force. "But we're not endorsing a candidate, just praying that God's hand will be on the election." The private task force, which operates from the Colorado headquarters of the Christian organization Focus on the Family ....
... since the mid-1980s the ceremony has been organized by the nonprofit task force headed by two prominent evangelical women: Vonette Bright, widow of Campus Crusade for Christ founder Bill Bright, and Shirley Dobson, wife of Focus on the Family founder James Dobson. She also made no apologies about the task force's exclusion of Muslims and others outside of the "Judeo-Christian tradition" from ceremonies planned by the task force on Capitol Hill and in state capitals across the country. "They are free to have their own national day of prayer if they want to," she said. "We are a Christian task force."
comment posted at 2:00 PM on May-6-04
comment posted at 2:58 PM on May-6-04

"Pull out, pull out", she cried, "Before it's too late!" - Sex sells. Amidst the ongoing PR conflagration - as newly released imagery of the psychosexual humiliation, by US guards at Abu Ghraib, of imprisoned Iraqis (a naked Iraqi man on a leash held by a female American soldier, notably) provokes widespread outrage (and the Red Cross says things are much worse than those pictures show), the BBC reports on informed speculation that the perfect storm of a growing insurgency, political reversals, and a PR debacle will lead to a hasty coalition pullout from Iraq. A frustrated and tense "Machine Gun Cheney" achieves release, via his wheelbarrel load of 30 guns (including a Thompson), blasting away at a Secret Service gun range. His aim, they say, is very good. But will Cheney bite the bullet and level with the American public about what it will now take for the US to prevail in Iraq ?
comment posted at 2:48 PM on May-6-04
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comment posted at 9:07 AM on May-7-04

"They have declared to all Heaven and Earth that Reverend Sun Myung Moon is none other than humanity's Savior, Messiah, Returning Lord and True Parent. This resolution has been announced on every corner of the globe." That includes the corner housed by the Dirksen Senate Office Building, where your tax dollars kept the lights on for Moon's coronation as King of Peace. Bow to your new leader, Americans! (via two doors down)
comment posted at 4:52 PM on May-5-04

The other shoe drops. The L.A. Times releases details from Major General Antonio M. Taguba's findings into prisoner abuse in Iraq, including evidence that convinced him that a U.S. soldier had sex with an Iraqi female.

(Can we all agree that she didn't ask for it...?)
comment posted at 5:01 PM on May-5-04
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comment posted at 6:08 PM on May-5-04

How Kerry Earned His Decorations For all the loud mouths who shout out that Kerry is a traitor, a guy who did not earn his medals, read this and then compare your medals with his! Did he turn against the war? Sure. Many soldiers did too. The nation also turned against the war and, finally, some responsible for getting us into the war admitted their mistake. "Kerry is one of the Senate's most decorated veterans — though he has far fewer medals than friend John McCain — and his record is impressive for an officer who spent just 10 months in Vietnam. Each of the medals below came with a matching ribbon. Kerry wore his ribbons when he testified before a Senate committee in 1971; the next day, joining hundreds of other vets, he lobbed them at the Capitol. "
comment posted at 2:18 PM on May-4-04
comment posted at 2:33 PM on May-4-04

The gas shortage won't get better. Paid more at the pump recently? I hope you don't drive an SUV -- things could get really painful really fast. Demand is always increasing for gasoline, but now we're hitting a point where refineries can't actually refine enough gas to meet demand, and very few places in the world can supply gasoline that meets our environmental standards.
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comment posted at 5:00 PM on May-4-04

Lesser Evils

The chief ethical challenge of a war on terror is relatively simple -- to discharge duties to those who have violated their duties to us. Even terrorists, unfortunately, have human rights. We have to respect these because we are fighting a war whose essential prize is preserving the identity of democratic society and preventing it from becoming what terrorists believe it to be. Terrorists seek to provoke us into stripping off the mask of law in order to reveal the black heart of coercion that they believe lurks behind our promises of freedom. We have to show ourselves and the populations whose loyalties we seek that the rule of law is not a mask or an illusion. It is our true nature.
comment posted at 2:05 PM on May-2-04