Articles Posted by PhatHead
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Print this out, stick it on the back of a cheap plastic chair, and put it in your yard.Pass it around FRiends. Do it tomorrow!
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If you haven't yet voted, you can still help choose a historical figure whose biographical portrait will be composed by Robert Weingarten, a noted photographic artist. Read about Audie Murphy, Alice Paul, Celia Cruz, Samuel Morse, and Frederick Douglass and then vote for the figure you would like to see portrayed. The finished portrait will be unveiled this fall and displayed at the Smithsonian.
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(This previously pulled thread re-posted with JimRob's permission.) I assembled this timeline and map of relevant locations based on publicly available information. My estimates of walking time are based on Google Maps measurements of the distance, and I tried to estimate on the long side. Please feel free to check all of my sources.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] I think my methodology should be pretty obvious, so I will not bore you with those details. I did not include my source for the house where he was staying, even though it is publicly available information. For events where there...
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Loughner registered to vote on Sept. 29, 2006, identifying himself as an independent. Records show he voted in the 2006 and 2008 elections but is current listed as "inactive" on the state's voter roles -- meaning that he did not vote in November.
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Last week, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) revoked its regulatory approval of the drug Avastin to treat late stage, metastatic breast cancer. Each year, the practicing oncologists chosen by 17,500 American women to save them from their life-threatening, heavily progressed cancer prescribe Avastin to treat them.The FDA explained that it was revoking approval of the drug for that use because it decided that the drug does not provide "a sufficient benefit in slowing disease progression to outweigh the significant risk to patients." Risk? The drug is prescribed for women who are otherwise going to die from cancer unless the...
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‘Hey Jim, could you put together a list of House races where it’s either an open seat race or a vulnerable incumbent?” the editors ask, oh-so-innocently. Do they have any idea how much work that entails? Scott Brown won a Senate race in Massachusetts by a healthy margin this year — you can find a list of winnable House seats by starting at page one of Michael Barone’s Almanac of American Politics and working your way to the index. It might be shorter to list the Democrats who aren’t vulnerable this year. Once you add up the upcoming special elections, the open-seat races, and...
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It took only two weeks after enactment of the long-awaited Brady Bill for its supporters to begin braying of its "success", measured by the number of handgun purchases which had been rejected. The new bureaucracy measures its success in the classic bureaucratic fashion: by how much it is doing, not how much it is doing right. This bureaucratic reality is at once amusing and frightening. Bureaucracy is tyranny, though it is almost never recognized as such. Just this spring, in response to a federal judge's ruling which had forbidden searches of public housing without a warrant, President Clinton proposed new...
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In the current health care debate, much of the Republican opposition has centered around various objections to the cost. It is certainly legitimate for our elected representatives to concern themselves with a properly balanced budget - indeed, it is their clear fiduciary responsibility. However, there is a danger in focusing solely on such arguments, because debates about cost really really amount to debates about how to nationalize health care, rather than whether to do so, and the latter is the debate we should be having. Just as a hypothetical, say the Democrats reached into their magic top hat and pulled...
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After all the rhetoric is put aside, one principle ran through President Obama’s speech tonight: that increased government involvement in health care can solve its problems. Many Americans fundamentally disagree with this idea. We know from long experience that the creation of a massive new bureaucracy will not provide us with “more stability and security,” but just the opposite. It's hard to believe the President when he says that this time he and his team of bureaucrats have finally figured out how to do things right if only we’ll take them at their word. Our objections to the Democrats’ health...
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In case you did not catch it, in his speech tonight, President Obama referred to "more than thirty million American citizens who cannot get coverage." That's a pretty big difference from the "47 million uninsured" number which has been tossed about for months. Why the change? The White House explains tonight that they have subtracted 10 million illegal immigrants and 5 million they believe can afford insurance, but choose not to get it. Those are interesting concessions, which I think need to be highlighted, because they are the most damaging to his overall call for radical reform. By reducing his...
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So, President Obama is going to make “an emotional and moral appeal?” I’m sure it will include many anecdotes about the struggles of various people trying to get insurance, or pay their medical bills. Isn’t it long past time to stop using sad stories to sell abhorrent policies? Because you know what? If your aim is to eliminate all the sad stories, you will never be done “reforming.” Just to keep in the spirit of things, I have a health care “sad story,” but it’s one I don’t think he can use. A little over five years ago, my son...
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The popular Cash for Clunkers program maybe stimulating the U.S. economy, but it's also apparently driving down revenue for one North Texas non-profit organization. With more and more people trading in their 'clunkers' for federal rebates, the Texas Can Academy is having to shift gears, to find some much needed cash. The organization encouraging you to "Write-Off The Car, Not The Kid," is itself in jeopardy of being written off. "This right here is the heartbeat of the organization. I need to make this money so these kids can be in our campuses. That's a lot of students who aren't...
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An estimated crowd of 25,000 to 35,000 people attended the Independence Day tea party at Southfork Ranch on Saturday, one organizer said.
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Now that the abortion president will be honored and feted and listened to at Notre Dame’s commencement, the question becomes, who will say the commencement Mass? The University of Notre Dame has officially and with much self-satisfaction invited President Barack Obama to address its 2009 graduates and to receive an honorary law degree. Not to put too fine a point on it, this is a deliberate thumbing of the collective nose at the Roman Catholic Church to which Notre Dame purports to be faithful. Faithful? Tell it to Julian the Apostate. That someone who procures or advocates abortion thereby excludes...
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The Vatican--which recently endorsed an iPhone prayer app and gave its blessing to gadget evangelism--is displaying further receptivity to technology with Saturday's announcement that Pope Benedict XVI will get his own YouTube channel. According to the Associated Press, the Vatican TV Center and Vatican Radio are collaborating with Google on the project, and texts and video of the Pope's speeches, as well as news about the pontiff, will be posted directly to the channel. More details on the project will be released next week, the Vatican press office said. Given past tech-friendly moves by the Vatican, the YouTube announcement is...
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President-elect Barack Obama will not move for months, and perhaps not until 2010, to ask Congress to end the military's decades-old ban on open homosexuals in the ranks, two people who have advised the Obama transition team on this issue say. Repealing the ban was an Obama campaign promise
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For many Americans, the trip to the voting booth Tuesday will be unremarkable in certain respects--put the check mark next to the favored candidate's name, put the ballot in the ballot box, and be done with it. For others, however, the experience will be fraught with some sort of frustration, from faulty voting machines to interminable waits and other inconveniences. If you fall into the latter group, our colleagues at CBS News Investigates want to hear from you. Document the irregularities or other problems you encounter with your cell phone camera, Flip videocam, or other device, and then upload that...
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"I haven't been able to get in touch with her..."
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Government computers in Ohio may been used to illegally access personal information about Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher, otherwise known as "Joe the Plumber," according to the Columbus Dispatch. During their October 15 debate, presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain referred to "Joe the Plumber" constantly. In the days following the debate, information on Wurzelbacher's driver's license or his sport-utility vehicle was retrieved from the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles database three times, the Dispatch reported. With access to such information limited to legitimate law enforcement and government business, state and local officials are now investigating whether the information was obtained...
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It’s not all that complicated. But, sometimes, playing the banjo really is like brain surgery. At least, it was for bluegrass virtuoso Eddie Adcock. The 70-year-old musician recently underwent brain surgery at Vanderbilt Medical Center in Nashville. The hope was to treat hand tremors that were threatening his ability to play his five-string. But instead of just hoping for the best, the surgeons actually had him play the banjo DURING THE SURGERY. So while electrodes in Adcock’s brain were doing their thing, Adcock was doing his. And those lucky surgeons got a little concert right there in the O.R.
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