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I think faster-than-light travel would be great and I look forward to travelling backward in time! Comments?

I disagree with the next post. Nothing can travel faster than the speed of light and you CAN'T travel back in time!!!

The cause of death ...

And I, Bruno, will dive 1,000 feet into a block of cement. On my head, yet.

Oh yeah! My score:

You answered 14 items out of 15 correctly.

Your score is 93%. Congratulations, you are a true master of idiocy. We'll leave it up to you to decide whether that's a good thing.

The sign includes the words "We honor our fallen heroes'' and a count of military deaths in Iraq.

I guess this means they don't honor the fallen heroes in Afghanistan.

I thought it sounded a bit familiar when bin Laden start talking about purchasing low-cost prescription drugs from Canada.

Who has had a more accomplished career as a coordinator? Bates as a DC or McCarthy as an OC? No contest. In his career at Miami and GB, Bate's defense have consistently been in the top ten. His acclaim is not based on a single season with Green Bay. McCarthy had three good seasons with New Orleans (10, 10, and 11) and 1 mediocre season (15th) and 1 poor season (19th) and now he's added to that rather pedestrian resume a horrible season with SF, the coordinator of the WORST offense in the league.

Heck, Sherman's resume as a HC is more impressive than McCarthy's resume as a coordinator.

Really, what qualifies McCarthy to be head coach in the NFL? He's never been head coach of anything - not even his daughter's soccer team.

Let's tally it up:

1) Fire a coach who won 3 division championships and got to the playoffs 4 times in five years.
2) Replace him with the offensive coordinator from the team with the worst offense in league andwho was Favre's QB coach during Favre's worst season in the league.
3) cause the release of the defensive coordinator who moved the Packers from the 25th defense in the league to the 7th using essentially the same personel.

Yeah, I'd say Thompson is doing a great job.

My former best friend once told me that conservative essentially means close minded.

"An open mind is nothing. The purpose of an open mind is the same as the purpose of an open mouth -- it is meant to close on something." - G.K. Chesterton

Not funny to me. ARe you a fashion critic for a living or just have a lot of time on your hands?

??? What did my post have to do with fashion? I was referring to a grammatical error in which a singular noun (lady) was used to refer to two people (wife and daughter). Get a grip ...

The lady in the background is Alito's wife and daughter.

I thought Alito was from New Jersey, not the Ozarks ...

In politics, things do not remain static. For Murtha and Dems to keep in the news, they have to shift their positions increasingly to the left. From: 1) We should redeploy, to 2) The War is Unwinnable, to 3) People should never enlist, to ... I suppose the next step is 4) People in the military are baby-killers and should be shunned and spat upon. Already some are tipping their toes in that water (Kerry), but look for it to become more prominient in the year to come.

... oops that should be: Mandatory Sick Leave Benefits!

With an active year of legislation that included enacting a smoking ban, launching an affordable housing rule for new development and addressing various employment regulations, some segments of the city are decrying Madison's government as hostile to business.

... and coming in 2006 to Madison: Mandatory Health Leave benefits for all employees.

Slavery was the catalyst on which the Southern States could no longer tolerate encroachment by the Federal government. - from the Georgian declaration

In what way were the rights of Georgia encroached upon? Had the Federal government attempted to outlaw slavery? No. Indeed, Lincoln promised not to do anything about slavery in the states in which it resided. And of course, Lincoln had not even taken office when that Georgian declaration was written and the previous administrations were all hospital to the institution of slavery. Douglas's popular sovereignty was an attempt to allow slavery's spread.

The problem really came down to this: Lincoln and many in the North wanted the expansion of slavery halted with the hopes that with its containment it would eventually wither on the vine. The South wanted to see slavery expanded into the territories in the belief that that would strengthen their political power and safeguard slavery in perpetuity.

Let me say one thing more. The true test of Democracy is how people respond when they lose an election. Do they react with respect and acceptance towards the democratic institutions or do they react in anger and bullets? Lincoln was elected fairly and constitutionally. The South did not wait to see what Lincoln would actually do as President; instead they declared themselves independent. Why? The bottom line is they seceded because they lost an election.

So much for their high ideals.

While it doesn't have any real practical application today, he is, technically, correct. A peace treaty was never signed.

Why would the Union sign a peace treaty with a rebellion? Peace treaties are only signed between sovereign parties; but the Union never recognized the confederacy as a sovereign nation.

Dude...YOU said the Southern States fought a war for slavery....back it up or shut up

If I posted every slavery comment made by Southern leaders as the cause for secession, I would be still posting 25 years from now. So, I'll limit myself to the opening text of the Declaration of Causes of Seceding States.

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Georgia: "The people of Georgia having dissolved their political connection with the Government of the United States of America, present to their confederates and the world the causes which have led to the separation. For the last ten years we have had numerous and serious causes of complaint against our non-slave-holding confederate States with reference to the subject of African slavery ..."

Mississippi: "In the momentous step which our State has taken of dissolving its connection with the government of which we so long formed a part, it is but just that we should declare the prominent reasons which have induced our course.

Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery ..."

South Carolia: "The people of the State of South Carolina, in Convention assembled, on the 26th day of April, A.D., 1852, declared that the frequent violations of the Constitution of the United States, by the Federal Government, and its encroachments upon the reserved rights of the States, fully justified this State in then withdrawing from the Federal Union; but in deference to the opinions and wishes of the other slaveholding States ..."

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And so on. Geez for slavery not being an issue, those seceding states sure dwell on it a lot in the "declarations of independence". They talk about it a heck of a lot more than they talk about tariffs. I can't belive we're even arguing about this obvious fact.

Show me a historical factual quote of a Southern diplomat stating that the only reason their state was voting for succession was because of slavery....please...

Show me a historical factual quote in which Lincoln states that he wants to outlaw slavery in the states. The most he wanted to do in 1860 was to limit its spread to the territories. He made a very fine legal case for his position in the 1860 speech at Cooper Union. But territories are not states and thus why should say, South Carolina, care whether or not there are slaveholders in the western territories if they were only concerned about state's rights?

The War of Southern Independence was a war that was fought for reasons that stretched back to the nullification crisis of 1832, it stemmed directly from a chain of events that began with Calhoun's resignation.

Hmmm. I suppose you wouldn't want to mention the 1833 compromise bill on the tariff proposed by Clay, signed by Jackson, and supported by Calhoun. But for goodness sake, don't mention the Dred Scott decision? John Brown? Popular Soverignty> The Kansas-Nebraska bill? The uproar over whether Kansas was going to entered as a slave or as a free state? Yeah, you better not mention any of that, because if you do, you're earlier statement that the Civil War had nothing to do with slavery will be shown to be clearly delusional.

Sure the tariffs were a hot-button issue and I would grant that they added fuel to the conflict; but to say that the issue of slavery was not a factor in the Civil War just make you look silly.

I imagine you'd be right. I was pretty disappointed a few weeks ago when I read that Lincoln's motives were more political than altruistic. Pity.

Lincoln was certainly a master politician and thus he never forgot the political angle to any particular problem he encountered. Having said that, there's no reason to believe he couldn't be both political and altruistic. I suggest you read a very fine volume, "Lincoln's Virtues", on the development of Lincoln's moral code and viewpoint prior to the Civil War.