[eggplant43]

It wasn't censored, it was removed. Mulder did you the courtesy of describing your post subject, and then gave people an avenue for receiving the information directly from you. That seems more than fair to me.

[Tipacanoe]

Yes, thanks for the courtesy Mulder and the note Egg! I understand the position, think it wise, but lament the effect. And if it walks like a duck . . .

[Mulderator]

Tipe--if you want to start a thread on the use of emergency contraception, that's fine. It was just that article that was inflammatory, in my opinion. If it is that important to you, feel free to start a thread or post here again about the use of it.

[Mulderator]

Well, I've thought about it and decided to post Tipecanoe's article. Here it is as he posted it above:

Join the EC E-mail Campaign


America's rate of unwanted pregnancy is a huge public health scandal, but five years after being approved by the FDA, emergency contraception--the use of normal birth control pills to block pregnancy within seventy-two hours of unprotected sex--has yet to fulfill its potential. Part of the problem has to do with the difficulty of getting EC in time; many doctors don't want the hassle of dealing with walk-in patients, many clinics are closed on weekends and holidays (times of peak demand) and some pharmacies, like Wal-Mart's, refuse to stock it. That anti-choicers falsely liken EC to abortion and tar it as a dangerous drug doesn't help.

The main barrier to EC use, though, is that most women don't know what it is. To spread the word, Jennifer Baumgardner and I have written an open letter explaining how EC works, how to get it and why women should even consider acquiring it in advance. If every Nation reader with access to the Internet forwards it to ten people and one list, and those people do the same and on and on, it could reach thousands, even millions of women. Like ads for Viagra, only not spam. Activism doesn't get much easier than this!

An Open Letter About EC

The one thing that activists on every side of the abortion debate agree on is that we should reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies. There are 3 million unintended pregnancies each year in the United States; around 1.4 million of them end in abortion. Yet the best tool for reducing unwanted pregnancies has only been used by 2 percent of all adult women in the United States, and only 11 percent of us know enough about it to be able to use it. No, we aren't talking about abstinence--we mean something that works!

The tool is EC, which stands for Emergency Contraception (and is also known as the Morning After Pill). For more than twenty-five years, doctors have dispensed EC "off label" in the form of a handful of daily birth control pills. Meanwhile, many women have taken matters into their own hands by popping a handful themselves after one of those nights--you know, when the condom broke or the diaphragm slipped or for whatever reason you had unprotected sex.

Preven (on the market since 1998) and Plan B (approved in 1999), the dedicated forms of EC, operate essentially as a higher-dose version of the Pill. The first dose is taken within seventy-two hours after unprotected sex, and a second pill is taken twelve hours later. EC is at least 75 percent effective in preventing an unwanted pregnancy after sex by interrupting ovulation, fertilization and implantation of the egg.

If you are sexually active, or even if you're not right now, you should keep a dose of EC on hand. It's less anxiety-producing than waiting around to see if you miss your period; much easier, cheaper and more pleasant than having to arrange for a surgical abortion. To find an EC provider in your area, see www.backupyourbirthcontrol.org, www.not-2-late.com or ec.princeton.edu/providers/index.html.

Pass this on to anyone you think may not know about backing up their birth control (or do your own thing and let us know about it). Let's make sure we have access to our own hard-won sexual and reproductive freedom!

The Things You Need to Know About EC

EC is easy. A woman takes a dose of EC within seventy-two hours of unprotected sex, followed by a second dose twelve hours later.

EC is legal.

EC is safe. It is FDA-approved and supported by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.

EC is not an abortion. Anti-choicers who call EC "the abortion pill" or "chemical abortion" also believe contraceptive pills, injections and IUDs are abortions. According to the FDA, EC pills "are not effective if the woman is pregnant; they act primarily by delaying or inhibiting ovulation, and/or by altering tubal transport of sperm and/or ova (thereby inhibiting fertilization), and/or altering the endometrium (thereby inhibiting implantation)."

EC has a long shelf life. You can keep your EC on hand for at least two years.

EC is for women who use birth control. You should back up your birth control by keeping a dose of EC in your medicine cabinet or purse.

What You Can Do to Help

Forward this e-mail to everyone you know. Post it on lists, especially those with lots of women and girls. Print out this information, photocopy it to make instant leaflets and pass them around in your community. Call your healthcare provider, clinic, or university health service and ask if they provide EC. Spread the word if they do. Lobby them (via petitions, meetings with the administrators, etc.) to offer EC if they don't.

Make sure that your ER has EC on hand for rape victims and offers it to them as a matter of policy. Many hospitals, including most Catholic hospitals, do not dispense EC even to rape victims.

Get in touch with local organizations--Planned Parenthood, NOW, NARAL, campus groups--and work with them to pressure hospitals to amend their policies.

If you can't find a group, start your own. Submit an Op-Ed to your local paper or send letters to the editor about EC.

Make sure your pharmacy fills EC prescriptions. Some states have "conscience clauses" that exempt pharmacists from dispensing drugs that have to do with women's reproductive freedom

[Moby]

Democracy at work! Well done Mulder, not that I thought you were wrong. Just never seen you change your mind before

[tantap]

I may not agree with the article, however I agree with your decision to post it.

Freedom of speech and all that......

[Mulderator]

Originally posted by Moby:
Democracy at work! Well done Mulder, not that I thought you were wrong. Just never seen you change your mind before

There was one other time, I thought I made a mistake, but then realized later I had not. Probably true here too!

Actually, I'm one of the last people to censor and have often seen stuff censored out that I thought was OK. I still do not think that "article" is appropriate, not because of the content, but because it reads to much like an endorsement of birth control, post pregnancy and also requests a mass e-mail campaign, which is a bit like endorsing spam. That was my primary concern as oppossed to the topic.

[Tipacanoe]

Understood! It is a bit over the line but I found it quite informative. (Not that any mate of mine will ever need EC, ahem!) But I was surprised to find how little my three grown up and otherwise well informed daughters really knew about this matter. When I brought it to their attention, we had quite a discussion.

Anyway, hats off to you Mulder. Thanks. I hope it doesn't have unintended consequences for you or the board. (Probably, few will read it anyway in this thread.)

[Mulderator]

Mr. Williams is an African American.

________________________________________________
Walter Williams (archive)
(printer-friendly version)

September 11, 2002

Poor language, poor thinking

Here's what the Harvard University Civil Rights Project's "scholars" said in a July 2001 press release: "Almost half a century after the U.S. Supreme Court concluded that Southern school segregation was unconstitutional and 'inherently unequal,' new statistics from the 1998-99 school year show that racial and ethnic segregation continued to intensify throughout the 1990s."

What's their evidence? They say that over 70 percent of black students attend schools where the student population is predominantly black, in some cases over 90 percent black. This, to Harvard's scholars, is resegregation -- but let us examine the term segregation.

Blacks are about 65 percent of the Washington, D.C., population. Reagan National Airport serves the Washington, D.C. area, and like every airport it has water fountains. At no time have I seen anything close to blacks being 65 percent of water-fountain users. It's a wild guess, but I'd speculate that at the most 5 percent or 10 percent of the users are black. Would Harvard's scholars say that Reagan National Airport water fountains are segregated? If so, might they propose bussing blacks in from Anacostia to integrate the water fountains?

What about ice hockey games? These are "segregated" affairs, for at no time have I seen any significant number of black fans in the audience. In fact, most times it was zero. There's also racial segregation at opera performances, dressage or wine-tastings.

If you want to see some segregated states, visit South Dakota, Iowa, Maine, Montana and Vermont. Not even 1 percent of their populations are black.

What proposal might Harvard's scholars have for us? Might they propose rounding up blacks where they're over-represented, such as in Georgia and Alabama, and bussing them to America's segregated states? Might they suggest drafting blacks to attend operas, dressage and wine-tastings?

Of course, being politically correct, they might feel that blacks should not bear the burden of desegregation. Thus, Harvard's scholars might recognize that there are two ways to skin a cat and propose that whites leave states such as South Dakota, Iowa, Maine, Montana and Vermont until the percentage of the black population reaches 13 percent?

America's non-scholars would easily recognize that just because blacks aren't proportionately represented in some activity, we can't call the activity racially segregated -- at least, in the historical usage of the term. A non-scholar's test for segregation would be: If a black person is at Reagan National Airport, is he free to drink at any water foundation he pleases? If the answer is yes, then the water fountains are not segregated. That would be true if a black person never uses the fountains.

The identical test applies to the question of school segregation. A non-scholar would ask: If a black student lives within a particular school district, can he attend that school? If he can, then the school is not segregated, even if not a single black attends that school. The same test applies to whether ice hockey games, operas and wine-tastings are racially segregated or not.

At one time, there was racial segregation. If a black wanted to use a water fountain, he was denied, often by law. And he was similarly denied by law from attending certain schools. Today, none of that is true. In turn, that means there is no school segregation. Because an activity is not racially integrated, a better word is heterogeneous, doesn't mean that it's segregated.

More importantly to the issue of education, there is no evidence anywhere that supports the civil-rights vision that black education excellence is impossible unless white children have first been captured to sit beside black children in school. From my view, to contend that race-mixing is a necessary requirement for black academic excellence is racially insulting.
___________________________________________________

[Mulderator]

Paul Craig Roberts (archive)
(printer-friendly version)

September 11, 2002

Iraq is not the problem

Can a patriot have misgivings about attacking Iraq? Is opposition limited to peaceniks and American-hating multiculturalists?

Wars have unintended consequences. Would an American invasion of an Arab country further radicalize the Islamic world, leading to the rise of unfriendly governments in Pakistan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia? Would the United States then have to invade a hostile Pakistan because of its nuclear weapons?

The terrorist threat comes from radical Islam. Saddam Hussein runs a secular state. Would overthrowing a secular ruler help or harm radical Islam?

An American attack on Iraq would cause a loss of sympathy among our European allies. Would a more isolated America receive the same cooperation in the battle against terror?

War hawks believe that a demonstration of U.S. military clout would improve the Middle Eastern situation. But Israel has been demonstrating clout for decades and is still engulfed by terrorism.

No doubt Saddam Hussein bears the United States ill will, and he may be acquiring weapons of mass destruction. Nevertheless, is the level of threat to the United States from a country of 23 million relatively poor and uneducated people blown out of proportion?

If the United States is to adopt the Roman approach of overthrowing enemies before they arise, the it should focus on China, a much greater potential threat. Ambitious China has the world's largest population and weapons of mass destruction. The Clinton administration gave China the missile technology required to reach American cities. U.S. firms, seeking lower costs, are building up China's high-tech industrial capacity.

Sound arguments can be made that the focus on Iraq is preventing more serious vulnerabilities from being addressed. Terrorists abroad do us less damage than the terrorists allowed into our country by our open-borders policy.

The Untied States is so politically correct that it no longer differentiates between illegal aliens and native-born citizens. Author and columnist Georgie Anne Geyer has shown that open borders have turned American citizenship into an empty concept.

If you believe that the United States has borders, read columnist Michelle Malkin's just released book, "Invasion." Malkin shows that aliens' rights trump both citizens' rights and citizens' safety.

No effort is made to control our borders. Malkin reports that in the six months following the Sept. 11 attacks, the State Department issued almost 200,000 additional visas to Middle Easterners and Southern Asians, areas that are known havens for al Qaeda. People without visas enter unhindered from Canada and Mexico.

Visas continue to be granted indiscriminately even though the State Department knows that a high percentage will overstay their visas and disappear into the population. The United States has become such a hodgepodge of different peoples and cultures that the Immigration and Naturalization Service has washed its hands of locating and deporting illegal aliens.

Can a country conduct a war on terror when it cannot control its own borders? Does it make sense for a country that refuses to defend its own borders to invade another country?

American universities have repeatedly made it clear that their multicultural goal is to prevent students from being enculturated into Western civilization. What does a people stripped of its identity defend?

The United States may be in more danger from the extraordinary imbalance in the political and ideological commitments of its university faculties than it is from Saddam Hussein. Time and age will destroy Hussein. But university faculties are self-selecting and self-perpetuating, and these faculties are overwhelmingly hostile to traditional American values and any political party that stands for these values.

An article in the current issue of The American Enterprise magazine, "The Shame of America's One-Party Campuses," shows the ratio of left-wing to conservative professors in a number of universities.

At Cornell the ratio is 27 to 1. At Harvard it is 25 to 1. The ratio is 35 to 1 at Denver College, 50 to 1 at Williams College, 72 to 1 at the University of Colorado at Boulder, 25 to 1 at Syracuse University, 8 to 1 at Berkeley, 15 to 1 at UCLA, 35 to 1 at the State University of New York at Binghamton, 9 to 1 at Stanford and 10 to 1 at Davidson College.

And some people think the problem is in Iraq?

[Mulderator]

Kathleen Parker (archive)
(printer-friendly version)

September 11, 2002

Be angry, be very angry

On a recent evening as we ambled toward today's date, dinner-party talk turned inevitably to Sept. 11 -last year's and this. Just as inevitably, the requisite voice of self-hatred rose above the din: "We deserved it."

Yes, wine was present, and no one was expecting to be quoted. I don't even remember who said it. Doesn't matter. Plenty of people have said it since the start, notably Noam Chomsky, the prolific author-linguist whose controversial blame-us book, "9-11," nourishes the nascent discontent of the pierced generation.

Once Chomsky, "arguably the most important intellectual alive," according to The New York Times, tagged the United States "a leading terrorist state" and suggested that we were merely reaping what we had sown, many more have felt comfortable sallying forth to speak the unspeakable.

Now it's practically a brand among the oh-so-enlightened who, it's probably safe to say, had no family in the World Trade Center towers last September.

Tis a shame. It isn't unpatriotic to criticize U.S. policies that may contribute to anti-American hatred within the troglodyte faction of radical Islam. American patriotism demands self-scrutiny. But it is mindless to suggest that civilians deserve to be obliterated for showing up at work. It is also not intellectually courageous to reduce a barbarian act to a bumper-sticker slogan of self-important posturing.

Make no mistake. What we deserve is to feel anger -make that outrage -and steely resolve. What we deserve is to get through this day of Performance Mourning as soon as possible and resurrect the song that provided aid and comfort to the World War II generation: "Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition."

To those suffering anger deficiency, click over to www.samizdata.net/blog (linked by Instapundit.com) to jump-start your moral outrage. The Web log features a photo -of a man plunging headfirst from one of the towers -that ought to help us remember exactly what no one deserves.

There's another image that sticks in my mind. It is of a woman buried in the ground to her waist, surrounded by a mob of angry men throwing stones until she is a lifeless, bloody pulp. In the background, I hear a baby crying, the one whose birth confirmed that this divorced 30-year-old Nigerian woman, Amina Lawal, had sex out of wedlock, breaking the law.

Even though Nigerian federal law prohibits executions and amputations, regional states can introduce contrary laws. Where Lawal lives -and where the primitive Muslim law prevails -any man or woman can be executed for sex outside of marriage. Lawal is scheduled to be killed when she weans her baby.

Except for the punishment inherent in having knowledge of such brutality, why should we care? What does a Nigerian woman have to do with our day of remembrance? Just this: The kind of primitive mentality that embraces a public stoning in contradiction of constitutional law is the same vicious ignorance that would impose its will on us.

It is the same mentality that cultivates suicide bombers and mass murderers from infancy. The same mentality that fueled the Taliban in Afghanistan. The same that stokes the fire of al-Qaida and that directed airplanes into the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon. In other words, vicious ignorance.

The United States can and should refine its foreign policies and work to feed and educate the Third World while generating goodwill. Those are worthy goals, the opposite of which still does not, by the way, justify "we deserved it." But goodwill alone won't thwart the immediate threat to our civilization, a threat that can only be mitigated with a proper channeling of our earned anger and the resolve to do sometimes-unpleasant work.

A year ago while still raw from the attacks, we had no trouble understanding President Bush's promise to pursue terrorism and the states that support terrorism for as long as it takes. Yet a year later, we are equivocal as we wallow in mourning and sorrow and guilt for whatever we did to deserve this.

What Bush also said a year ago was that rooting out terrorism would take time and patience. On this day of remembrance, remember that. And be very, very angry.

[eggplant43]

RAMALLAH JOURNAL

'Moonlight' and Mendelssohn in the West Bank

By SERGE SCHMEMANN


RAMALLAH, West Bank, Sept. 10 — The old Steinway grand had seen better days, but when Daniel Barenboim drew the first nostalgic notes of Beethoven's "Moonlight" Sonata from it today, 200 neatly uniformed Palestinian students froze in delight.

Music, and especially music of this caliber from a live Israeli master, is not something that has often graced young lives more wrapped up in the daily misery of curfews, roadblocks, dangers and hatreds.



Mr. Barenboim, the famed conductor and pianist, seemed forgiving of the hoarse old instrument and the many television cameras with him on the stage. The music was a message, which he spelled out after an ecstatic ovation from the pupils.

"Each one of us has a responsibility to do what is right, and not to wait for others to do it," he said. "My way is music. What I can do is play music, play music for you, and maybe this way, in a very small way for these few moments, we are able to build down the hatred that is so much in the region."

His words sounded incontrovertible. But Mr. Barenboim's music has stirred some sharp debate in Israel, most memorably when he led a German orchestra in a piece by Wagner, Hitler's favorite composer, at an Israeli arts festival in July 2001. Many in the audience walked out, and Mr. Barenboim was accused of everything from insensitivity to "cultural rape."

Mr. Barenboim, who was born in Argentina, raised in Israel, and now divides most of his time between Berlin and Chicago, has also been vocal in his criticism of Israel's military crackdown on the Palestinians, often posting his views on his Web site, daniel-barenboim.com. In March, while Israeli troops were cracking down on Palestinian towns, Mr. Barenboim announced that he would give a concert in Ramallah, the Palestinian headquarters in the West Bank. The Israeli Army barred him from going, saying it could not guarantee his security, and the concert was canceled.

Three weeks ago, on his last visit to Israel, Mr. Barenboim, 59, gave a concert at Bir Zeit University, a Palestinian university near Ramallah.

This time, there was little advance notice, and Mr. Barenboim simply ignored whatever restrictions were in force. He declined to discuss how he got in, but a German diplomatic car was waiting for him outside.

After a few weeks of relative quiet, the visit seemed not to generate the same resistance that arose in March. There was no immediate comment from Israel, and the event was given scant notice on Israeli television news.

But for the students who came to the Friends School, a respected private school, it was a day to remember. Mr. Barenboim performed only the one sonata, and then invited the Palestinians to play for him.

Three girls rose to the challenge. Sileen Khoury, 15, gamely worked her way through a Chopin waltz, followed by 15-year-old Nadia Arouri with Mendelssohn's barcarole, and Zeina Amr, 14, who was so nervous she forgot the name of her piece. Mr. Barenboim told them all they were great, and urged them to keep studying.

"It was very nice of him, because he took all the trouble to come here through checkpoints and everything," said Ms. Amr.

Ms. Khoury, who said she wanted to continue with music, added that she was "a bit nervous, but with Mr. Barenboim beside me I felt safe."

"Actually it was an honor for us, she said. "The Israelis try to stop us from learning, working, but they can never stop us from playing music."

She said she had been studying piano for six years, but her seventh year at the conservatory was delayed because curfews had prevented her from taking her exams.

After the students went back to class, Mr. Barenboim, dressed in a casual white jacket over a black polo shirt, sat down with reporters to pursue his message, alternating comfortably between English, Hebrew, French and Italian.

As director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and artistic director of the Staatsoper Berlin, he is something of a citizen of the world, and it has been largely his visits to Israel that have brought him criticism. Mr. Barenboim came this time for the International Chamber Music Festival in Jerusalem, and the police were in evidence there on Sunday after he received death threats.

Mr. Barenboim first performed in the West Bank in 1999, when he appeared with Edward Said, the Columbia University professor and outspoken Palestinian, with whom the musician became friends in the early 1990's. For the past three years, Mr. Barenboim has run summer workshops in Germany and the United States for young musicians from Israel and Arab countries.

To people who ask why he made the special effort to come to Ramallah, he said his answer was simple.

"I'm not a politician," he said. "I don't have a plan to end the conflict. But I think the lesson we have to learn from the 20th century is that every human being — small, young as you or older like I — has to think of his responsibility as a human being and not always depend on the politicians and the governments."

Anyway, he said, he was happy to be able to speak Hebrew in Ramallah without feeling uncomfortable, and to demonstrate that there are different kinds of Israelis. "The worst that could happen today is that they didn't like the way I played," he said.

As for those who might find fault with the visit, he said, "Anyone who criticizes my being here today, I only have pity for him."

In Ramallah, at least, there was no one to pity, and nobody complained about the music. "It's extremely important to have him here," said Colin South, the director of the Friends School. "Anybody of this caliber who can come to the West Bank and play for us right now is just incredibly encouraging. We're very grateful for him being here."

[eggplant43]

I just know mulder will be outraged by this:


September 13, 2002

A Simple Click Stirs a Lot of Outrage

By RAYMOND HERNANDEZ


WASHINGTON, Sept. 12 — For some time, travelers browsing the State Department Web site for helpful tips about Guadalajara, Mexico, found much more than they bargained for when they clicked on a photograph of President Bush.

The click transported them to a partisan playground, where they were told how to get involved with the Republican Party and even how to donate money to it.

The State Department site, it turns out, had been providing a link to a Web site run by the Republican National Committee despite federal laws prohibiting government resources from being used for partisan purposes.

The link was not removed until late this afternoon, after a reporter asked about it. State Department officials said they were not sure how long the link had been operating. But one person who noticed it said it was operating as early as Sept. 5.

The Republican Party Web site made no bones about its aims, recounting President Bush's record and even offering Republican memorabilia, including mugs, ties, scarves and ballpoint pens, for sale.

The site, which had a red, white and blue Republican National Committee logo, also gave visitors an opportunity to register to vote, sign up as a party volunteer and donate money, all with a click of the mouse.

"Help the R.N.C. support the Republican Party and win elections nationwide," the Web site said. "Help us give President Bush a stronger working majority in Congress."

The discovery of the link on the State Department site prompted protests from politicians and good-government advocates, who called it blatantly political and demanded an investigation into who was behind it.

Claire Buchan, a spokeswoman for the White House, referred questions about the Web site and its link to the State Department but added, "I understand that that is being fixed and removed."

Philip Reeker, a State Department spokesman, called the link to the Republican Party's Web site a "mistake" and emphasized that agency officials were unaware of it until a reporter pointed it out.

"We have corrected it," Mr. Reeker said. "We thank you for bringing it to our attention."

A spokesman for the Republican National Committee said party officials had no idea that a government agency's Web site had a link to the party's site.

It is unclear whether other government Web sites provide such links, though critics have long maintained that government sites themselves are often thinly veiled promotional tools for politicians.

"We've been saying for years that the principal purpose of many Congressional Web sites is just to promote members of Congress," said Gary Ruskin, the director of the nonpartisan Congressional Accountability Project.

Election law experts say the link to the Republican site may violate several laws, including the Hatch Act, which prohibits federal employees from engaging in partisan activities "while on duty or in government offices."

The experts also say the Web site and its link may also violate campaign finance laws that impose penalties for soliciting campaign contributions from government property.

"Somebody has made a horrible mistake," said Trevor Potter, a Republican who is a former chairman of the Federal Election Commission. "It just doesn't make any sense. I can only think that this is some kind of terrible mix-up because it is so clearly prohibited by law."

The situation has prompted Representative Robert Menendez, Democrat of New Jersey, to send a letter to the White House urging the administration to remove the link to the site.

Mr. Mendendez, the ranking Democrat on a House committee that oversees the State Department, also called for an investigation by the Federal Elections Commission, the Justice Department and the State Department's inspector general.

In an interview this afternoon, Mr. Menendez scoffed at the State Department's contention that the link was a mistake.

"You cannot create a link like this by accident," he said. "No way. It takes a lot of thought to create such a link. It cannot be inadvertent."

To get to the Republican Web site from the State Department site, www.state.gov, a user had to click on a heading entitled Embassies and Consulates. That led to a page listing the nation's embassies and consulates around the world.

Once there, the Web user could click to the posting for the United States Consulate in Guadalajara. That posting contains, among other things, an official photograph of President Bush. A click of the mouse on the president's name, beneath the image, would linked the user directly to the Republican National Committee's Spanish-language site, "Abriendo Caminos."

That site leads to all sorts of information about the party, in Spanish and English.

In his letter to the White House, Mr. Menendez dismissed the link as "egregious political material that hardly qualifies as official State Department business."

But Mr. Reeker, the State Department spokesman, said the link was probably created by people working in the Guadalajara consulate without the knowledge of officials in Washington. "I'm amazed that somebody caught it," he said. "None of us knew about it."

[JewisHeritage]

Originally posted by eggplant43:
I just know mulder will be outraged by this:

I JUST KNOW MULDER WILL BE OUTRAGED BY THIS:

WASHINGTON, Sept. 12 — For some time, travelers browsing the State Department Web site for helpful tips about Guadalajara, Mexico, found much more than they bargained for when they clicked on a photograph of President Bush.

The click transported them to a partisan playground, where they were told how to get involved with the Republican Party and even how to donate money to it.

MULDER said. "None of us knew about it."

Oh Mulder! First that Whitehouse Website {you know what I am talking about!} AND now this!

Will your TRICKERY ever end?

[n2gun]

AP • Reuters


Scrap Worker Accidentally Fires Howitzer


Sep 13, 10:07 am ET

KIEV (Reuters) - A Ukrainian scrap metal worker destroyed two roofs and singed his face when he cut into a 1940s howitzer and accidentally fired off a shell no one had noticed was lodged inside, local media reported Thursday.
Interfax-Ukraine news agency reported the worker had heated the metal by cutting the gun and had triggered the shell, which flew about 800 yards. It said there were no other casualties in the central Ukrainian city of Berdychiv.

The news agency also said the company had paid for repairs to the roofs but work at the scrap yard had been stopped after local prosecutors launched a criminal investigation.

Ukraine, situated between Russia and an expanding European Union, has a huge arsenal of rusting weapons, which often end up in the country's dozens of scrap yards.