World-News

Seattle Post Intelligencer
by David B. Berrian

04/17/06

To the IRS: I can't do this any more. I will no longer pay for war -- the murder of civilians -- with my tax dollars. For more than 40 years, I have paid federal taxes accurately and regularly. I've often supported new taxes when the proceeds would help people. Now I have to stop. Attached is my 2005 tax return that shows I have taxes due. I won't be paying them voluntarily. Although I'll continue to pay state and local taxes, I will no longer pay federal income tax...

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/266765_firstperson17.html


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

Boston Globe
by Cathy Young

04/17/06

The most contentious recent battle between creationists and evolutionary biologists is not the debate about the newly discovered 'missing link' between fish and land animals. Rather, it is a bizarre incident that involves predictions of doomsday and charges of encouraging terrorism. At bottom, this conflict is not about religion versus science but about the clash of two religions. It started early in March when Eric Pianka, an ecologist at the University of Texas who was named Texas Distinguished Scientist of 2006, gave a speech at a meeting of the Texas Academy of Sciences, filled with dire warnings about the fate of humanity and the earth. About a month later, Forrest M. Mims III, chairman of the Environmental Science Section of the Texas Academy of Science, posted an article about the event in a Web magazine called The Citizen Scientist. He asserted that Pianka advocated the death of more than 5 billion people from a virus for the cause of saving the planet -- to enthusiastic applause from the audience...

http://tinyurl.com/zobve


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

In These Times
by David Sirota

04/14/06

For the first time in more than a decade, Democrats seem to have a shot at taking back Congress. But also for the first time in recent history, Congress is on the cusp of switching hands without a voter mandate. How is that possible? Because Democrats are only in the hunt thanks to gross Republican missteps -- and they are going out of their way to make sure their potential election to the majority is about nothing. Call it the Seinfeld strategy. Los Angeles Times columnist Ron Brownstein reports, 'Democratic leaders are drifting toward a midterm message that indicts Bush more on grounds of competence (on issues such as Iraq, Hurricane Katrina and prescription drugs) than ideology.' As a short-term electoral tactic, the Seinfeldian 'competence' strategy allows the GOP to right itself with new management. Sadly, it is not a strategy based on ideological differences that puts a boot to conservatives' neck when their hypocrisy trips them up and they fall down...

http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/2600/


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp



http://sharenews.twoday.net/search?q=GOP
http://sharenews.twoday.net/search?q=hypocrisy
http://sharenews.twoday.net/search?q=David+Sirota

The American Prospect
by Robert Dreyfuss

04/17/06

Bad heart, errant shotgun, and Halliburton stock options in tow, Dick Cheney has ruled the White House roost for the past five years, amassing enough power to give rise to the joke that George W. Bush is 'a heartbeat away from the presidency.' Yet, despite the fact that hundreds of thousands of words have been written on Cheney's role in the Bush administration, most of what's been written fails to explain how the vice president wields his extraordinary authority. Notoriously opaque, the Office of the Vice President (OVP) is very difficult for journalists to penetrate. But a Prospect investigation shows that the key to Cheney's influence lies with the corps of hard-line acolytes he assembled in 2001. They serve not only as his eyes and ears, monitoring a federal bureaucracy that resists many of Cheney's pet initiatives, but sometimes serve as his fists, too, when the man from Wyoming feels that the passive-aggressive bureaucrats need bullying...

http://www.prospect.org/web/view-web.ww?id=11423


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp



http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Bush+legacy
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Cheney
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Halliburton
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Robert+Dreyfuss

Risky baby steps for creativity (and freedom)

WolfesBlog
by Claire Wolfe

04/17/06

I'm astonished over and over again by people who say they love freedom (and often know absolutely, in great detail what society and their own lives would look like if the Great Blue JuJu in the Sky or the Next American Revolution suddenly made us all free again) but who are absolutely unwilling to take any personal risks, here and now, to become more free. Freedom is risk. If we don't accept risk, then we might rightly say we value prosperity or property rights or being left alone or license to indulge in our pleasures or vices or some of the other bi-products of a free society. But anyone who is so chronically risk-averse that they constantly talk about freedom but never act to increase the level of autonomy and independence in their lives is not just risk-averse but also freedom-averse...

http://www.clairewolfe.com/wolfesblog/00002010.html


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

Slate
by Juliet Eilperin

04/17/06

"It's hard to find a defender of the current process: It's engineered to favor not only incumbents, but also typically the most ideological ones who derive their power from pandering to party extremists. House incumbents seeking re-election now have a 98 percent chance of winning, up from the lower 90s in the 1990s. It's a system in which party operatives manipulate sophisticated computer software to maximum effect, shuffling voters across district boundaries to guarantee their candidates have the best chance of winning election every two years...

http://www.slate.com/id/2140054/


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp