by Thom Hartmann
Why would a multi-multi-millionaire Senator, who consistently votes to harm the hungry and the poor who so concerned Jesus, join forces with religious fundamentalists to stack this nation’s highest courts? Could it be because he and his wealthy Republican friends see huge financial benefits for themselves and their corporate patrons in a compliant court?
At the “Justice Sunday” event hyped to national prominence by Bill Frist’s appearance, Chuck Colson told America that we should read the Federalist Papers to understand the intent and the mind of the Founders.

Apparently Colson overlooked Federalist 47, published by James Madison on February 1, 1788. Titled, “The Particular Structure of the New Government and the Distribution of Power Among Its Different Parts,” Madison wrote about how important it was that the different branches of government serve as checks and balances on each other.

“No political truth is of greater intrinsic value, or is stamped with the authority of more enlightened patrons of liberty,” wrote Madison of the concern about any one particular group dominating all branches of government. He added, “The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.”
Full Article: commondreams.org

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A tabletop experiment created nuclear fusion — long seen as a possible clean energy solution — under lab conditions, scientists reported.

But the amount of energy produced was too little to be seen as a breakthrough in solving the world’s energy needs

For years, scientists have sought to harness controllable nuclear fusion, the same power that lights the sun and stars. This latest experiment relied on a tiny crystal to generate a strong electric field. While falling short as a way to produce energy, the method could have potential uses in the oil-drilling industry and homeland security, said Seth Putterman, one of the physicists who did the experiment at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Full:nytimes.com

‘fruitless labors’, ‘rootless science’ (F.G. Lorca, in New York, 1930)

BP,the world’s second-biggest publicly traded oil company, posted a 29 percent jump in first-quarter profit, helped by higher energy prices.

Net income rose to $5.49 billion, or 25.6 cents a share, excluding gains in the value of its oil inventories, BP said yesterday. Revenues rose 16 percent, to $79.8 billion, from a year earlier.

BP, which is second to the Exxon Mobil Corporation, is the first of the world’s large oil companies to report earnings from the first quarter, when New York crude oil averaged $57.60 a barrel, natural gas prices rallied in the United States and Europe and gasoline prices surged.
Full:nytimes.com

There was a three-fold increase in terrorist attacks worldwide last year and Iraqi insurgents have the same capacity to strike that they did 12 months ago, according to the US government and military.
The number of terrorist attacks the US considers “significant” rose to 655 in 2004 from 175 in 2003, according to US state department figures released by a senior Democrat in congress.

That total – based on a briefing from government officials – takes in the Belsan school siege, violence linked to fighting over Kashmir and a surge in terrorist incidents in Iraq.

The tally for Iraq, one of the drivers of the increase, leapt from 22 attacks in 2003 to 198 in 2004, a figure confirming the bloodiness of the insurgency for much of that year.

The period after the January 30 election was one of relative calm, but the number and frequency of attacks has risen in recent weeks with the long impasse over forming a new government.

General Richard Myers, the most senior US soldier, said last night that Iraqi insurgents were now launching attacks at the same rate of 50-60 a day rate as they were in 2004.

“I think their capacity stays about the same. And where they are right now is where they were almost a year ago,” he said, adding that it was vital the political process went forward.
Full:guardian.co.uk

MEXICO CITY, April 24 – A capital typically clogged with traffic was thronged Sunday by hundreds of thousands of people who marched into the main plaza to protest a government effort against Mayor Andrés Manuel López Obrador that threatens to force him out of next year’s presidential elections.

The police estimated that more than one million people participated in the march. Aides to the mayor estimated that there were 750,000 people. Several political observers described it as the biggest in the country’s recent history.

After two weeks of heated political discourse and confusing legal maneuvers, the march was not the first to denounce the government’s campaign against the mayor. But it was a dramatic illustration of seemingly growing support for Mr. López Obrador and disappointment in President Vicente Fox.
Full:nytimes.com

ALEXANDRIA, Va., April 26 – In the most significant case involving what prosecutors have called the Virginia jihad network, an American-born Muslim cleric was convicted on Tuesday of inciting followers to wage war against the United States just days after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

After deliberating for seven days, the jury convicted the cleric, Ali al-Timimi of Fairfax, Va., on all six counts in the indictment, including counseling others to wage war against the United States and use firearms and explosives in furtherance of violent crimes. Mr. Timimi, who will remain under house arrest until sentencing on July 13, faces a mandatory life sentence under federal guidelines.

Mr. Timimi, 41, was described by federal prosecutors as a rock star among radical Islamists and the spiritual leader for a group of young men who trained to fight abroad for Muslim causes, including defending the Taliban against American-led forces.

“By his treasonous criminal acts, he has proven himself to be a kingpin of hate against America and everything we stand for, especially our freedom,” the United States attorney for eastern Virginia, Paul J. McNulty, said in a statement.

But Mr. Timimi’s lawyers and supporters described him as an apolitical cancer researcher and part-time Koranic scholar who viewed himself as a bridge between his conservative Muslim sect and American society.
Full Article:nytimes.com

NEVE DEKALIM, Gaza Strip (AP) – Thousands of Israelis poured into the Gaza Strip’s main Jewish settlement bloc Wednesday to protest this summer’s planned withdrawal, show support for the settlers and bid farewell to the area Israel occupied for 38 years.
Gaza settler leaders said they expect at least 100,000 people, which would make it one of the largest demonstrations since Prime Minister Ariel Sharon announced the pullout plan last year. Turnout was expected to be bolstered by warm weather and the Passover holiday, when schools are closed and many people are on vacation.
Some settler leaders have expressed hope that the protesters will stay in Gaza to resist the withdrawal. However, Avner Shimon, mayor of the Gaza settlements, said he expected the visitors to leave after Passover.
“People are coming to enjoy themselves, see the place and hug us and to tell us they are with us. I estimate that nobody will remain when it is over,” he told Israel Army Radio.
Early Wednesday, the Israeli army closed the main crossing into the Gush Katif bloc of settlements to private cars, allowing only buses through. Army Radio said 1,500 buses were expected to reach Gush Katif.
Full: apnews.myway.com

Just after the turn of the century, scientists knew that their fundamental theories weren’t quite right — they just didn’t know what to do about it.

If we’re talking about what happened a century ago, this is where Albert Einstein came to the rescue. During the “miracle year” of 1905, he published five groundbreaking scientific papers that are still sparking innovations 100 years later.

But we could as well be talking about what’s happening right now. Over the past decade, physicists have come to appreciate, to an even greater degree than in Einstein’s day, just how little they know about how the cosmos works. The latest observations indicate that 95 percent of the universe consists of stuff we don’t understand:

Dark matter, which can only be detected through its gravitational effect, makes up about 25 percent.
Dark energy, a property of empty space that seems to be pushing galaxies farther apart at an increasing rate, accounts for the other 70 percent.
“In a sense, it’s the ultimate Copernican revolution,” says Sean Carroll, a physicist at the University of Chicago. “Not only are we not at the center of the universe — we’re not even made of the same stuff as most of the universe is made of.”

The current knowledge gap presents “an amazing parallel” between 1905 and 2005, says John Rigden, a physicist at the Washington University of St. Louis who wrote the book “Einstein 1905.”

“In 1905, if a person put their hand on top of their desk, they had no idea what their hand was contacting,” Rigden says. “In other words, the nature of matter was unknown. Atoms were speculated about, and many people believed in them in 1905, but other people did not.

“Now, today, if you put your hand on top of your desk, you know what your hand is contacting — but that type of matter makes up only about 5 percent of the universe,” he says. “One hundred years have passed, and we’re still 95 percent ignorant about the material world. I find that amazing.”
Full:msn.com

One possibility we need to take seriously now that Cardinal Ratzinger is Pope is that Opus Dei represents the future of the Catholic church. I do not like the prospect because Opusdeistas give me the creeps. This is not an admission to make in polite society, I know, but I have never met a single one who seemed to me straightforward. Perhaps this is because I am a journalist and they have had very bad press. If I meet one professionally, they know, and I know, that we are on different sides. I expect them to tell me as little of the truth as they can get away with and to look smug when they’ve succeeded.
This suspicion has nothing to do with Dan Brown whose books I have never read and never will, unless I end up in hell and find there’s nothing else to read. It is not an expression of general anti-Catholic prejudice. Jesuits and Dominicans are men I actively look forward to meeting and am seldom disappointed in. None of my best friends are Catholics, but quite a few of my good friends are, though all are fairly liberal ones who would hate Opus Dei much more than I do. I just do not like secret societies whose members think they have been chosen to do the work of God.

Opus Dei, and the other “movements” as they are known in Catholic jargon, are a twentieth century phenomenon. They are an anti-democratic response to the problem that mass literacy and universal suffrage posed to a hierarchical and authoritarian organisation. The first response of the Vatican was complete condemnation. Democracy, science, liberalism, free thought and even the belief that the church could compromise with these forces were all condemned. They were to be fought in the outside world, and extirpated from within the church. This was the posture of the church when Opus Dei was born, just before the Spanish civil war broke out, and from which it grew.
guardian.co.uk

Weblogs definitely betray the obssessions of their mistresses. I come on both sides from a fairly rabid bunch of anti-Catholic Spaniards, who even before the horrific Civil War which caused so much suffering and death to us, were disgusted by the hypocrisy of the Church. During the war, the priests in our small town blacklisted people suspected of ‘collaborating’ with the forces of democracy in Spain, and my uncle was arrested and spent years in prison, only to be released into Franco’s Spain as a pariah, not allowed to teach, which was his profession. I have another uncle who went to fight at 16 and fell near Madrid, or at least that’s what the family heard. He could have survived and been one of the Republican slave/prisoners who built Franco’s monstrous monument to the ‘glory’ of all that useless death. I guess on some level, once a Catholic always a Catholic, because I find myself personally insulted by the appalling hypocrisy and wickedness of the Church. The Opus Dei were Franco’s personal priests and John Paul II’s mentors. These clowns have NOTHING to say to the world today, having used up their morality long ago. In Africa, they go hand-in-hand with Protestant evangelists spreading the most vicious and constricting version of Christianity ever.

WASHINGTON – Growing at a rate of about 900 inmates each week between mid-2003 and mid-2004, the nation’s prisons and jails held 2.1 million people, or one in every 138 U.S. residents, the government reported Sunday.

By last June 30, there were 48,000 more inmates, or 2.3 percent, more than the year before, according to the latest figures from the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

The total inmate population has hovered around 2 million for the past few years, reaching 2.1 million on June 30, 2002, and just below that mark a year later.

While the crime rate has fallen over the past decade, the number of people in prison and jail is outpacing the number of inmates released, said the report’s co-author, Paige Harrison. For example, the number of admissions to federal prisons in 2004 exceeded releases by more than 8,000, the study found.

Harrison said the increase can be attributed largely to get-tough policies enacted in the 1980s and 1990s. Among them are mandatory drug sentences, “three-strikes-and-you’re-out” laws for repeat offenders, and “truth-in-sentencing” laws that restrict early releases.
Full: news.yahoo.com

Well somebody has to fill up the beds in the new corporate-owned jails that are popping up everywhere. It’s a shame the ‘criminals’ are not keeping up with the supply. There is an obvious solution, though. Do I even have to say it? Hint: just think of a bunch of criminals we desperately need to have locked up…