Hmm.
 

eta: The link, she no work.

Belief in Evolution by Party Affiliation

Republicans
30% believe in evolution
68% do not believe in evolution

Independents
61% believe in evolution
37% do not believe in evolution

57% believe in evolution
40% do not believe in evolution

link

Hmm.
 

I'm not sure whether I'm more scared that 68% of R's believe in creationism or that 40% of D's do.

Hmm.
 

2.

And the independents aren't doing too much better.

Hmm.
 

how many can explain how organ systems developed from single celled animals?

Hmm.
 

http://www.venganza.org/images/wallp...th_WWFSMD2.jpg

ramen.

aV

Hmm.
 

How many can explain how an internal combustion engine works?

Hmm.
 

Mitosis

Hmm.
 

It's like lighting a fart in a very small room.

Hmm.
 

Hank's post, or the working of an internal combustion engine?

soldiers and criminals
 

I think this is a particularly good post by Orin Kerr, though I don't think I agree with all of it:

• Thoughts on the Continuum Between War and Crime: My post last night on what to do with Al-Qaeda cell members who can't be charged in criminal court led to a fascinating and long comment thread — about 100 comments in two hours last night, plus another 120+ so far today — and I wanted to follow up and respond to some of the comments. In particular, I want to to talk about the continuum between fighting wars and fighting crime, and where I think the Al-Marri case fits on the spectrum.
  
  First, let's talk about some first principles. Our traditions know two basic ways of dealing with hostile actors: through war and through the criminal justice system. Within each system, there is a balance of factors at play in creating the rules. As a general matter, however, war is about self-protection: we try to disable the enemy from attacking us, and we take whatever measures are necessary to do that. There are limits, of course, conventions as to the laws of war and rules that each side adopts. But by and large the goal of self-protection by disabling future attacks takes priority.
  
  The modern criminal justice system is different. Incapacitation is only a small goal of that system. Rather, we are primarily interested in punishing to discourage future harmful acts and to further the ends of justice. We create law enforcement offices to investigate and prosecute the acts to make this possible, but we intentionally give them only limited powers because we don't want them to be the problem rather than the solution. We make the police jump through a lot of hoops and face punishment for breaking the rules: they have to prove their cases in particular ways, subject to strict evidentiary rules, confrontation rights, the exclusionary rule for search and seizure violations, and the like. The intuition is that limited police powers can prevent abuses while giving the police enough authority to investigate a reasonable amount of crime.
  
  What's interesting about these two different systems is that we can think of many cases that are somewhere along the continuum between the two poles. Consider the following persons detained by the United States in various circumstances:
  
  1. U.S. citizen seized in Afghanistan, suspected of helping the Taliban forces in battle.
  2. U.S. citizen suspected of blowing up a federal building as part of a plot to overthrow the U.S. government.
  3. Suspected German soldier seized on the battlefield on D-Day in 1944.
  4. Frenchman seized on the battlefield on D-day in 1944 suspected of helping the Germans.
  5. Suspected crack cocaine dealer arrested in New Jersey.
  6. Suspected Al Qaeda terrorist seized in U.S. after entering the U.S. to launch another 9/11.
  7. Suspected Al Qaeda terrorist seized in Iraq after entering Iraq to join fight against U.S.
  8. U.S. citizen who lives in Detroit and suspected to be a supporter of Al Qaeda; evidence suggests he sent $10,000 to a "charity" that is really a fun to help Al Qaeda launch more attacks in United States.
  9. Egyptian citizen in the U.S. on a tourist visa seized in the U.S. on suspicion of planning attacks against a U.S. military base.
  10. U.S. soldier in World War II suspected of being a double agent for the Germans.
  
  From the standpoint of policy, which of these cases should be handled under the "war" rules and which under the "crime" rules? And how do you tell the difference? My sense is that most people would say that there are difficult line-drawing issues here. Not everyone on this list should be dealt with under the "war" rules; not everyone on this list should be dealt with under the "crime" rules.
  
  Plus, we have a range of different criteria to use to determine which set of rules should apply, without any one criteria being the obvious factor that should control as a matter of policy. Some might want to focus on the seriousness of the perceived threat; others on whether there has been a formal declaration of war; others on whether a foreign country is involved; others on the individual's citizenship; others on the location or circumstances of the seizure.
  
  All of these are possible lines to draw, but none are widely agreed to be the most important; as a result, we have a continuum from war to crime with some cases seeming to be somewhere in the middle. (Plus, while court cases help resolve some issues at the far ends, the existing cases are not very consistent; compare Ex Parte Milligan with In re Quirin. There's not a lot of consistent guidance from them, so we have one side making Milligan arguments and the other side making Quirin arguments.)
  
  Now, back to my hypothetical in which we have admitted Al Qaeda terrorists who entered the U.S. to launch an attack but who can't be charged criminally. The Al-Marri case tells us that we have to deport them or set them free, a result that I described in one of my less articulate moments as "bizarre." Many commenters objected, asking, what's so bizarre about that — isn't that how the criminal justice system works? I think that's the wrong box, though; I see the case as much or more a "war" case than a "crime" case.
  
  Why? There are two primary reasons I see it that way. The first and most important is that members of a terrorist cell see themselves at war; they see themselves as soldiers in a holy war against the United States, and are acting accordingly. When a group sees themselves as soldiers at war trying to kill you, it seems fair that you should want to return the favor. Second, the members of the group have no connection to the United States other than as soldiers. The only reason they are here and not on the battlefield abroad is that they have chosen to attack the enemy's civilian population rather than its soldiers. They not only see themselves as soldiers; they are here as soldiers. When you put those two factors together, it seems to me that the case is as much or more a "war" case as a "crime" case. I realize it won't seem that way to everyone, but it does to me.
  
  Now, so far I've mostly ignored the question of how you know if someone is who they are suspected of being. "Sure," you might say, "maybe we detain an Al Qaeda cell member who enters the U.S. just to attack us — but how do we know who that is?" But here I think the Hamdi plurality had a pretty good solution — kinda made up as a matter of constitutional law, perhaps, but not bad as a pragmatic solution to the problem. Under the Due Process approach offered in Hamdi, an individual's procedural rights — what trial they get to test their detentions — is a sliding scale depending on who the person detained is, where they were detained, why, citizenship, etc. As I see it, it's a mushy balancing test that ends up largely replicating the continuum from crime to war; it's a blend of the crime model and the war model. The closer a case gets to a traditional crime category based on known and acknowledged criteria, the more Due Process rights resemble a criminal trial. On the other hand, the closer a case gets to the traditional war category based on known and acknowledged criteria, the more those rights resemble the traditional standards used in war.
  
  What I found odd about Al-Marri is that it seems to treat most cases of Al Qaeda terrorists here to attack us as crime cases. It seems to me like an effort to bypass the Supreme Court's sliding scale war-crime framework in Hamdi and to replace it with a regime in which all the Al-Qaeda bad guys are forced into the crime model. I don't think this is the right box, which is why I see the Al-Marri framework as odd.
  
  Anyway, that's my take. I realize a lot of commenters disagree, but I hope we can approach the disagreements in good faith with the understanding that we are all trying to grapple as best we can with a very difficult set of problems.

Hmm.
 

can they take us out to their driveway and use visual exhibits?

Hmm.
 

Because God wants it to work. How difficult is that?

Fourth Circuit bitchslap
 

• Colin Powell's former Chief of Staff Lawrence Wilkerson estimates that the US administration has arrested between 30,000 and 50,000 suspects during the past year. Eighty-five percent of them were innocent, according to Wilkerson. "We really have created a mess here. A terrible mess," Wilkerson says. "This has been incredibly damaging."

http://www.spiegel.de/international/...488149,00.html

Fantastic!
 

• The Connecticut for Lieberman Party is calling on Senator Joseph Lieberman to resign from the U.S. Senate following his remarks made Sunday on CBS' Face the Nation regarding military action against Iran.
  
  Lieberman said on the national television program that, "we've got to be prepared to take aggressive military action against the Iranians."
  
  The Connecticut for Lieberman Chair, Dr. John Orman, called for Lieberman's resignation saying that he "crossed the line" and "no longer represents the views of the citizens of Connecticut."
  
  Orman, a longtime critic of Lieberman, took control of the minority party back in January.

link

Fantastic!
 

so is there talk that Joe won't get the party's nomination in 2012?

Fantastic!
 

IIRC, that guy seized control of the party by being the only person to register to vote with it. If Joe can persuade a couple of his Republican lobbyist pals to re-register, he should be OK.

Hmm.
 

Yes.

Hortatory Subjunctive
 

It all comes down to grammar.

• When In Trouble, Blame The Hortatory Subjunctive
  By Laura McGann - June 13, 2007, 4:35 PM
  
  In Lurita Doan’s defense, she has trouble with tense sometimes. That’s why members of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform think she planned to punish her employees at the General Services Administration for cooperating with investigators, not because she actually planned to sanction anyone.
  
  Lurita Doan explained her grammatical shortfalls in her testimony today. But Democrats on the committee had a hard time buying it. Rep. John Yamuth (D-KY) took her to task on her tense mincing over a statement Doan made about GSA employees that had cooperated with the Office of Special Council in its investigation into her conduct. When pushed, Doan claimed she meant to invoke the "hortatory subjuctive" when she said:
  
  Until extensive rehabilitation of their performance occurs, they will not be getting promoted and will not be getting bonuses or special awards or anything of that nature.
  Son of a Latin teacher, Rep. John Sarbanes (D-MD) disagreed. He called her statement the common "future" tense. He also spotted a connection between her grammatical defense and an accusation that she encouraged her employees to help out Republican Congressional races. At a presentation given by Karl Roves' deputy she asked her GSA employess: “How can we help our candidates?”

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/003427.php

The video is worth watching just to catch the smirk on the face of the audience member when the Hortatory Subjunctive Defense is invoked.

Hortatory Subjunctive
 

Much like I can't tell if rp and Burger are smacking or patting, I can't figure out what this hortatototototory thing is.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hortatory_subjunctive didn't really help.

Hortatory Subjunctive
 

when do the Hatch act hearings start?

Why did the Soviet Union collapse? Falling oil prices.

pathetic.

Well, the leaders of the USSR were doing the best they good.

Hmm.
 

It's funny that the fear and idiocy at the base of the thing Darwin proved an intellectually infantile method of understanding our origins turns out to be the mechanism that enforces the law of natural selection most effectively. If it wasn't for the religious, how would we ever come to be ignorant and senseless enough to kill one another at the rate we do? It isn't much of a stretch to suggest that if Religion were made irrelevant, Darwin might also lose some relevance.

Hmm.
 

Is this fueled solely by alcohol, or are other drugs and/or sleep deprivation contributing?

Just can't wait to lose.
 

These guys just can't wait to lose. It’s like they are just chomping at the bit for us to screw up and then gloat about it. Patreus asked till September to see if he can make this work and then make an assessment. We just get out of the gate and these guys are already calling it a failure. Are we even close to September? By calling it a failure now they are just making it that much harder for Patreus to succeed. Can't they for once put the interest of the country above their own petty political objectives and keep their damn pie hole's shut until September?

At Kasserine pass we suffered terrible losses. A good thing these guys didn't control congress then.


Iraq surge a failure, top Democrats tell Bush

Jun 13 04:38 PM US/Eastern

Top US congressional Democrats bluntly told President George W. Bush Wednesday that his Iraq troop "surge" policy was a failure.
Senate Majority leader Harry Reid and House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi challenged the president over Iraq by sending him a letter, ahead of a White House meeting later on Wednesday.

"As many had foreseen, the escalation has failed to produce the intended results," the two leaders wrote.

"The increase in US forces has had little impact in curbing the violence or fostering political reconciliation.

"It has not enhanced Americas national security. The unsettling reality is that instances of violence against Iraqis remain high and attacks on US forces have increased.

"In fact, the last two months of the war were the deadliest to date for US troops.

The letter appeared to preview a fresh showdown over Iraq between anti-war Democrats and the president, just a few weeks after Bush forced his foes to strip troop withdrawal timelines from a 100 billion dollar emergency war budget.

It also came a few days after the US military mourned its 3,500th soldier killed in action in Iraq.

Pelosi and Reid told Bush in the letter that they planned to send him new legislation to "limit the US mission in Iraq, begin the phased redeployment of US forces, and bring the war to a responsible end."

On Tuesday, Reid said that Senate Democrats would attach troop withdrawal deadlines to a Defense Department Authorization bill, due to be debated within weeks.

The next critical point in the showdown between Bush and Congress over Iraq is expected in September, when US commander in Iraq David Petraeus is due to report on progress in the strategy to "surge" up to 30,000 more US troops into the war-ravaged nation.

Even senior Republicans have said they expected the president will have little choice but to make adjustments in the Iraq strategy, once the report is made public.

Hmm.
 

A valid question... But, think about it. The thing Darwin's theories have most damaged is the thing that causes us to kill each other the most, thus going through a natural selection process of sorts in certain parts of the world.

Hmm.
 

I can't understand this at all, but I'm completely drained (alas not from some fellatio analog) and now have had the drink described on the other board.

Just can't wait to lose.
 

I just had to see that again. GO.

Hmm.
 

Part of natural selection is survival of the fittest. Right now, in a lot of places, the religious are the most "fit" in the sense that they control the levers of power and kill or imprison their enemies. They're the "alphas" so to say, at the top of the Darwinian pyramid of animals striving to survive and succeed. I was just noted that it was curious a group who Darwin confounded would be a good example of a group excelling in the struggle to survive that he outlined. They're the least advanced and arguably most regressed on the planet, yet they're succeeding. Kind of a quirky observation, I know. It's not complete, and I don't mean it to be an argument or position. Just a goofy little thought.

Just can't wait to lose.
 

We retook Kasserine Pass within a week of losing it, and completely overhauled our strategy and tactics as well as our command structure. Eisenhower had the heads of a number of commanders, and learned very quickly. Within 6 weeks, the new commander, Patton, had reversed the momentum and was mopping up the German presence in Tunisia.

So Bush has now had four years in Iraq, and four months of the surge, and you're complaining that we're not patient. Kasserine Pass indeed.

Hmm.
 

I'd love to see stats on Islamic views of evolution. Compare the relative ignorance of all our fundamentalists.

My suspiscion is that the differences in views on evolution don't necessary break down between Dems and Rs, but instead fall more on religious lines. The difference between the Dems and Rs is probably attributable to more Catholics being Dems.

Hmm.
 

Catholicism shows how it is more a business than anything else in its stance on evolution. Rather than fight it and look like absolute laughingstocks as many of the imbecillic evangelicals and fundamentalists often do, Catholicism made a business decision to co-opt Darwin. It's brilliant. First, it makes them look progressive. Second, it allows them to argue everything biblical is allegorical, which makes their product maleable and impossible to refute (even though they talk out of both sides of their mouth with their "infallibility" thing). Third, they look reasonable in comparison to people as foolish and absurd as literalists (not that almost everybody doesn't already).

The question left is whether fools who actually believe the absurd are more dangerous than a shrewd business that claims to "believe," but hedges in ways that suggest it doesn't really believe and is just shucking and jiving to keep its flawed model running.

I'll say this - I won't even talk to a fundamentalist. I've met some and find them appalling the same way I find neo-Nazis and racists appalling.

Kasserine Pass or Whack-A-Mole?
 

• Three months into the new U.S. military strategy that has sent tens of thousands of additional troops into Iraq, overall levels of violence in the country have not decreased, as attacks have shifted away from Baghdad and Anbar, where American forces are concentrated, only to rise in most other provinces, according to a Pentagon report released yesterday.

WaPo

Hmm.
 

With logic like this, I have no doubt that we are descended from Monkeys.

Its Israel's Fault
 

http://news.sky.com/skynews/article/...270455,00.html

• Hamas fighters have overrun the headquarters of their rival Fatah's Preventive Security force, as factional fighting in Gaza continues.

Hmm.
 

Penske, this sock blows. It always has.

Its Israel's Fault
 

I don't get it. Who is saying that "Its Israel's Fault"?

It's Israel's Fault
 

Its Israel's Fault
 

Now do you get it?