http://www.usatoday.com/...

This is a poll on Evolution and Creationism.  The first two questions asked if you thought the following two statements were true:

"Evolution, that is, the idea that human beings developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life"

"Creationism, that is, the idea that God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years"

Obviously, one can't agree with both statements-they are mutually exclusive.  You can't think both that "God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years" and also think that "human beings developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life".  They are contradictory.  However...

I'm curious as to Kossacks' opinions on Proposition 86, which quadruples the state cigarette tax, with much of the funding going for various types of health care programs.  I'm currently leaning against the proposition, but I want to see what everybody here thinks.

I have seen liberals frequently say things like, "I will never bring up a child in this world".  There was even a group called "Zero Population Growth" (which changed thier name to Population Connection a few years back).

Conservatives have no such compulsions.  In fact, religious conservatives are known for having large numbers of children, for various reasons. (religious biases towards large familes, being against birth control and/or abortion, conservative women being less likely to live outside the home, etc.)

Children tend to vote the way thier parents do, so if this pattern is followed, Democrats are going to have serious troubles down the road.  In today's Opinion Journal (Wall Street Journal editoral page), there are some hard numbers to back up this theory:

http://www.opinionjournal.com/...

First, let's discuss what is not election fraud, before discussing why there is no scenario where discussing election fraud helps us.

Discouraging Democratic turnout (either by elected officials, such as Blackwell, or by private groups) is not election fraud.  It's slimy and evil, but it's not really election fraud-it doesn't change the number of votes that were actually recorded.

Stating that electronic voting machines are prone to being hacked or are prone to errors is not election fraud (unless there is proof that they have actually been hacked).  Just because a door is unlocked doesn't mean somebody broke in (in terms of unsecure voting machines which are easily hacked).  And random errors should help both sides evenly.  Of course, this is a problem that should be fixed, but poorly designed electronic voting machines are not election fraud.

Probably almost nobody here knows about this.  I sure didn't before reading this article.  I'm surprised journalism this high in quality still exists at a disaster of a publication like Time.

http://www.cnn.com/...

Basically, what happened was that, in 1980, Congress passed a tax credit to encourage companies to turn coal into diesel fuel via the Fischer-Tropsch process, to reduce our dependence on foreign oil.  This is the thing that Governor Schweitzer of Montana has been pushing, and is probably a good idea.

Thing is, Congress worded the law based on the tax credits so that you could get them by performing any chemical change to coal.  So, wiseass companies started performing the cheapest chemical change to coal as possible, and turned coal into...coal.  Then they could get the full tax credit.  One company lost $400 million turning coal into coal, but got $852 million in tax credits, for an actual profit of $452 million, paid by the taxpayers.

I am a big supporter of free speech.  It is my number one issue.  I voted against Gore/Lieberman in 2000 for free speech reasons alone, due to Lieberman's attitute on the subject.  (My worthless California vote went to the Libertarian.)  While I support Feingold for president, I do also have some, fairly minor, free speech concerns with McCain/Feingold (although Feingold's record on all free speech issues but electioneering is nothing short of exemplorary).

Therefore, I must support the Danes in the "Cartoon Violence" affair.  The largest part of the concept of free speech involves the right to publish content that will be offensive to some.  Without support of such content, free speech does not exist.

It is starting to appear to me that Islam is inherently incompatible with the concept of free speech.  If the choice is between Islam and free speech, I choose free speech.  America should too.

I saw Senator Russ Feingold at the UCLA School of Law yesterday.  He gave a short speech and took questions from the audience.  There was a good turn out-they moved the event from the small room they had originally booked to a larger one-and used the original room as an overflow room (I presume with a audio/video hookup).  The majority of people in the audience were UCLA law students, and (in theory) the topic for the speech was Robert's confirmation.

Dean's recent comments, attacking Republicans for this and that ("I hate all Republicans and everything they stand for", "The Republican party is a party of white Christians who are not very friendly to different kinds of people", "Republicans never made an honest living in their lives", etc.) have gotten a quite a bit of negative coverage in the mainstream media.  Most people say this is unfair, that the quotes are taken out of context, etc.

I disagree.

No, really.  I'm not making this up.  Well, he doesn't want to shut down the service, he just wants it to not be able to tell anybody about the data they collect.

http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/content/news/epaper/2005/04/21/m1a_wx_0421.html

We need to propose a constitutional amendment that reads:

"As long as a voter's intent can be determined, and the voter has the legal right to vote in the race in question, said voter's vote shall be counted, notwithstanding any other legal or procedural issues."

What are you people, nuts?  Shooting yourself in the foot is supposed to be a Republican trait.  I don't care if they are airing ads on Sinclair-both are owned by BIG TIME Democratic supporters.

I'm just going to quote this in it's entirely.

http://www.tinyrevolution.com/mt/archives/000172.html#more

Seymour Hersh spoke at Berkeley last Friday, October 8th. He told a story about recently receiving a call from an American lieutenant in Iraq who'd just witnessed other American soldiers massacring Iraqis.

(continued)

This is probably false.  It certainly is a crazy theory.  My evidence only consists of stuff that Mr. Google has brought me.

HOWEVER...

I believe there is a chance Zell Miller "took one for the team", and the man that convinced him to do so was Bill Clinton (with an assist by our good friends James Carville and Paul Begala-who had run campaigns in the past for both men).