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"While our European ancestors were hanging from trees, these ancient people were writing algebra and solving quadratic equations."

LOL. Algebra was not "written" by ancient Iraqis; and quadratic equations were not "solved" until the Renaissance in Europe, IIRC.

Well, there were too many. The ratters & mousers were great, but once they took out migrating passerines or ground nesting or feeding birds, cats can be very destructive. The offspring of feral cats can be nasty creatures; they cannot be tamed; they have the wild streak always; had several friends who cornered feral cats unintentionally/unexpectedly and they were severely clawed, causing horrendous disconfiguration to their faces.

Well, I still don't get it. We never had any problems like that with cats on our farm.

But you're right, if you've got problem cats, SPCA is the better route, PC or not. And if SPCA wasn't available to us in the old days, they are now.

Just Damn, now if I could only get this passion for an anti Planned Parenthood rally....

You might be surprised...some of us cat lovers are also out there protesting at abortuaries.

I take it from your previous posts that you're old farmers. I am too, and I think a lot of us old farmers used to do things that were just stupid and unnecessarily cruel.

In our farm we never killed cats, but we did kick the dog.

That's right, most of the people in my family kicked this meek old mutt named Lady. She wasn't a bad dog and she never got in anybody's way, so there was no reason at all to kick her...except sheer meanness. People thought it was funny. Maybe it's a redneck thing, 'cause we were pretty redneck.

I've sort of forgiven myself for doing it, because I was only three years old at the time and was just copying my elders. It's one of my earliest memories, seeing her sad uncomprehending eyes.

Now every time I see a dog who looks like Lady I feel remorse and send up a little prayer, Dear God, let there be a doggie Heaven and let poor old Lady find a little love and kindness there.

So anyway, my point is, some of us farm folk used to do a lot of cruel things for no godd@mn good reason.

we did back on the farm.

So did we. wasn't fun but just part of the cycle of life we learned on the farm.

What FOR? Not being hostile to you, just want to know why.

I grew up on a farm 40-50 years ago, and we never killed cats and I never knew anybody who did.

We had feral cats. Had chickens, too, and the cats never killed any chickens. We liked them because they kept the rats out of the corn crib.

You've got those who are actually schooled at home by parents....and you've got those who have been suspended for being problem children, and are therefore at home - and they are still called homeschooled.

Both get the homeschool label but only one deserves it. Which type were these perps?

That's my question, too.

The media is only reporting, as far as I've seen, that Ludwig was "homeschooled" -- no information about why or how or for how long he was homeschooled.

I thought journalists were supposed to ask who, what, when, where, why. Guess that's gone out of fashion.

Now it's sufficient for journalists to intone, ominously, "homeschooled" -- as if all homeschooling situations were the same (bad, of course), and that's all the public needs to know.

The Dims have an extremely weak point here. Sure, it has to be granted that members of Congress see intelligence in a different format than does the president.

For example, Congress does not see PDBs, of course (except in the case of the August 6, 2000 PDB that was voluntarily declassified by the White House).

But I heard it reported (I think on Fox News Sunday, by Chris Wallace, Brit Hume et al) that the intelligence seen by the president was, if anything, far MORE alarming than what members of Congress saw.

Ultimately the Dims' argument is silly, because few of them even bothered to go read ANY intelligence reports (which are kept in a guarded area in the Capitol) -- before they voted on the war! We know this from logs kept on which members visited the area.

Does that sound familiar? Yep, it's what most Dim congresscritters did (or rather, did NOT do) before voting on the Clinton impeachment. Few could be bothered to go look at the damning evidence.

I call for John Murtha's immediate trial for treason and his immediate expulsion from the House of Representatives!!!

There is a sort of precedent for that.

President Lincoln ordered Clement Vallandigham arrested and exiled to the Confederacy.

Vallandigham, the Ohio leader of the "Peace Democrats," had

...call[ed] the war, "wicked and cruel,"and suggested that the Republicans only wanted to end slavery to further their quest for a dictatorship."

Actually, it turned out the Confederates didn't trust this Dimocrat snake Vallandigham either, and put him under guard, though he eventually snuck back into Ohio.

Then...

...A committee of the Democratic convention demanded that President Lincoln reverse his ordered exile of Vallandigham.

Lincoln refused. "Must I," Lincoln lamented, "shoot a simple-minded soldier boy who deserts, while I must not touch a hair of a wiley agitator who induces him to desert?"

Funny how the Democrats haven't changed much.

One can only hope the good people of western Pennsylvania will be "incentified" to see what an idiot they have representing them in Congress.

LOL. That illiterate sounding neologism caught my eye too.

Plame Wilson is the wife of Bush administration critic Joseph Wilson. Her name was first revealed in a column by Robert Novak in July 2003.

It's annoying that even FoxNews can't get the facts straight on this point.

Plame's name had been "revealed" in many places before July 2003 -- by the CIA's own screw-ups (Aldrich Ames, and an apparently inadvertant instance of letting Cuban intelligence get access to CIA files); and by Joe Wilson himself.

Novak's column was not even the first time Plame's name was published. Joe Wilson himself published it in "Who's Who."

The truth is, the first time Plame's name was published in conjunction with the purported "fact" that she was "covert" was not by Novak, but by David Corn of leftist moonbat "Nation" magazine.

Sycophant of the week: Todd Purdum of the Times

Todd Purdum is Mr. Dee Dee Myers -- she of "eat sh!t and die" fame.

Dear Trust but Verify, this is really the banished 'gingersnaps' here, posting under an old screenname, 'gumbo.'

Forgive me that my topic isn't the miracle baby (though I AM rejoicing over that news!), but about the Natalee Holloway threads...I just wanted to get back to you to tell you THANK YOU, THANK YOU SO MUCH for sticking up for me on those threads!

The only way I found out about your kind actions following my banishment was through another kind FReeper, who let me know you and some others had "gone to bat" for me.

I can't say how touched I am over that. I'm so grateful there are still such good and decent people on FR.

For now I'm not going to post anymore on the NH threads (though apparently I've been given permission to do so under my old name). I'm not even reading any threads on FR for awhile.

But I will check into my FReepmail under the 'gumbo' account a couple of times a week. So if there's ever any news about the NH case --or anything else you'd like to share-- I'd be most honored to hear from you again.

--Joyce (gingersnaps/gumbo)

"unless Senator Lincoln Chafee puts principle over party, the inexplicable John Bolton nomination will squeak through the Foreign Relations Committee on a party-line vote," Kerry added. "We have to do everything we can to make sure that doesn't happen.

It's Kerry who is "inexplicable," not Bolton. Why does such a twit as Kerry even exist?

McCain will NEVER be President. He just guaranteed that.

McHagel won't either.

I don't know Hagel's latest stance on judicial filibusters, but his behavior over the Bolton nomination has killed whatever presidential aspirations he might have had.

He just doesn't know it yet.

Ah, so there's even a picture of the neighbor and his garage. Thanks for posting. Hope the neighbor doesn't get blamed for complaining (if he did). He's not responsible for the horror.

now I guess he did it to pay the child back for ...what???? What can a child that age do that is so terrible that warrants this man murdering her by slicing her throat??? Perhaps she spilled her milk at the dinner table or perhaps she didn't clean her room well enough!

First reports about the missing girls mentioned they'd had been scribbling on a neighbor's garage shortly before they ran off to the park (see post 23).

(That prompted some here to speculate that the angry neighbor might've been involved in their disappearance.)

My theory is, the nut-case dad heard about it and went berserk-o.

(It goes without saying that scribbling graffiti isn't a capital crime -- but I figured I'd better say it lest I get flamed. I'm just speculating as to the trigger that set the perp off.)

His rage triggered by a "minor" disciplinary issue

That makes me think my theory about what happened might be right.

The two girls had been drawing or scribbling graffiti on a neighbor's garage with Magic Markers just before they ran off into the park.

I have a hunch that neighbor got upset about the scribbling/graffiti writing and called one girl's home to complain. (One article said they were erasable markers, but maybe the homeowner didn't know.)

When he got the putative phone call (this is all speculation of course) I'm guessing the murderous dad went ballistic and went out to find the daughter.

And since he's used to trying to settle scores with his fists and feet, the rest is sad history.

Without jumping to conclusions, I noticed that a reporter from at least one of the Chicago newspapers is strongly hinting it's the father of Laura.

He's the one who found the bodies. Apparently that has raised suspicion.

Also, investigators took clothing from Laura's family's household.

The family reportedly moved to Zion IL from Florida last year. The father joined them later.

Interesting link re Louis Fischer. I wonder how you could say he was as bad as Duranty, though. In the biographical part of the page to which you linked, is this:

In Communist and some left wing circles he was criticized for disloyalty to the Soviet Union. In June 1945 he broke publicly with The Nation, with which he had been associated for 22 years, accusing them of a ‘misleading’ representation of current events, and employing double standards, especially concerning the Soviet Union...

...He was one of two American contributors to The God That Failed (1949), an autobiographical collection of essays written by ex-Communists and disillusioned fellow travelers.

The article goes on to say, essentially, that he remained a leftist all his life, but not a communist.

Not at the good schools!(Father of grad student)

What do you consider the good schools? Certainly not the Ivies, I hope, where grade inflation has been rampant for years.

(I'm sincerely interested in your answer --as a parent I'm in the market for a good school for my next graduating high schooler.)

Her "ugly" goes right to the bone and it comes from the inside out. Evil and hatred always manifest themselves in that sallow, puffy, droopy and hardened ugliness that is synonymous with Hillary's face.

I believe it was Dr. Johnson who said "The outer is the inner revealed."