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"As far as I'm concerned, as long as I don't say anything that's classified, I'm not worried," he said.

It's classified for him to say that nothing he said was not classified.

...soldiers will go into battle with autonomous vehicles close behind.

Strike that. Reverse it.

Yup - anything that promotes homosexuality will be a winner in Hollywood.

Perhaps, but I'm not convinced Brokeback does. Two older gay men who you never meet live together on a ranch and at least one of them gets killed because of it. Jack Gyllenhaal's character is killed, most likely by being beat up. And the only gay character left standing is Ledger's, who ends up living a lonely life in a stinkin' trailor because he did not have the guts to be with the one he supposedly loved.

Not a very positive image promoted by the movie.

Gyllenhall plays a scientist or something, no? I remember friends saying good things about it at the time.

I never say October Sky. He must have been 10 or so in City Slickers. Based on Brokeback, I think I'll rent October Sky.

Thank God that Billy Crystal isn't hosting. I think that Palance might go psyco if Brokeback Mountain met City Slickers in the opening skit.

Which is funny, since Jake Gyllenhaal of Brokeback played Billy Crystal's son in City Slickers.

If Spring was unwilling to provide the coordinates to someone claiming to be the telephone owner's wife, perhaps the telephone owner should have talked to the Sprint operator.

Or is the location of a GPS phone the kind of information that not even the owner is entitled to from Sprint without a subpoena?

I see. That debate would certainly be reflected in the debate about what the unforgiveable sin is.

Your pastor says: What then is it? The unforgivable sin of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is an act of resistance which belittles the Holy Spirit so grievously that he withdraws for ever with his convicting power so that we are never able to repent and be forgiven.

I understand what he is saying (I probably have committed such an act of resistance), but I have heard from others that no one is beyond redemption. That we ALL have the power within us AT ALL TIMES to ask for forgiveness, it is just that our stubbornness gets in the way.

As your pastor alludes to in his article I suppose there is disagreement among believers as to what exactly this unforgivable sin actually entails.

“Every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven men, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven” (Mt. 12:31)

How does one blaspheme the Spirit?

Cosmic justice.

Yes, and not discussing in physics class how many angles can fit on the head of a pin is also a restriction on science education.

The only person who could fire them is Peter Kalikow, the head of the MTA (a semi-autonomous government agency run by neither Pataki nor Bloomberg).

Benedict has confirmed all the sainthoods and beatifications begun by the late pope, with one exception. Earlier this year, he cancelled the expected beatification of a Frenchman, Leon Dehon (1843-1925), a Catholic social thinker whose anti-Semitic writings had initially escaped the notice of the review commission.

I wonder what else has escaped the notice of the review commission.

Has anyone been declared a saint, only to have that title taken away at a later date?

I prefer workers to be able to freely alienate their labor. That is capitalism. That means refusing to alienate it at times.

You are obviously no capitalist.

The NYT is hardly authoritative.

It just goes to show you what hard heads will do in these kind of negotiations.

Oh, for god's sake. When my doorman strikes, it injures me.

You tolerate far too much government control over the lives of people then I prefer. But, that's your right.

This is a matter between the MTA and its workers. Workers don't show up, they get fired. End of story. No interference by the heavy hand of the courts. It's really not that difficult.

I am talking about their contract with the state of NY to provide transit service.

What contract is that?

It's a well-known fact taht this strike is completely illegal and in total violation of state law.

It should no be illegal to withhold one's work from an employer. People have the right not to work. The MTA's remedy is to fire the workers who do not show up for work.

No rational person can possibly think otherwise.

Rational people can think otherwise.

This is how the NYT is reporting it today.

On the final day of intense negotiations, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, it turns out, greatly altered what it had called its final offer, to address many of the objections of the transit workers' union. The authority improved its earlier wage proposals, dropped its demand for concessions on health benefits and stopped calling for an increase in the retirement age, to 62 from 55.

But then, just hours before the strike deadline, the authority's chairman, Peter S. Kalikow, put forward a surprise demand that stunned the union. Seeking to rein in the authority's soaring pension costs, he asked that all new transit workers contribute 6 percent of their wages toward their pensions, up from the 2 percent that current workers pay. The union balked, and then shut down the nation's largest transit system for the first time in a quarter-century.

Yet for all the rage and bluster that followed, this war was declared over a pension proposal that would have saved the transit authority less than $20 million over the next three years.