I find it especially sad that he died just two days before Father’s Day.  From all appearances he deeply loved his son, and enjoyed being a son to his father.  They both survived him and will have a tough time I’m sure of reconciling themselves to the fact of his death.  But they’re Catholic, so there’ll be plenty of support available.

He was an excellent interviewer.  He knew how to listen and was intelligent, articulate, informed and reasonably unbiased in his questioning.  Still, he was an “everyman” in his exuberant love of baseball and his mid-western values.

No doubt he’ll join the pantheon of great journalists, each of whom in their own way attempted to inform the public with no regard for being entertaining.

The outcome is no surprise to rationalists and atheists.

On 3 March 2008, in a popular TV show, Sanal Edamaruku, the president of Rationalist International, challenged India’s most “powerful” tantrik (black magician) to demonstrate his powers on him. That was the beginning of an unprecedented experiment. After all his chanting of mantra (magic words) and ceremonies of tantra failed, the tantrik decided to kill Sanal Edamaruku with the “ultimate destruction ceremony” on live TV. Sanal Edamaruku agreed and sat in the altar of the black magic ritual. India TV observed skyrocketing viewership rates.

Millions of people must have uttered a sigh of relief in front their TVs. Sanal was very much alive. Tantra power had miserably failed. Tantriks are creating such a scaring atmosphere that even people, who know that black magic has no base, can just break down out of fear, commented a scientist during the program. It needs enormous courage and confidence to challenge them by actually putting one’s life at risk, he said. By doing so, Sanal Edamaruku has broken the spell, and has taken away much of the fear of those who witnessed his triumph.

In this night, one of the most dangerous and wide spread superstitions in India suffered a severe blow.

Read the full story and watch the videos here.

Is the only way to effectively combat terrorism the creation of a police state?

MI5 seeks powers to trawl records in new terror hunt

Millions of commuters could have their private movements around cities secretly monitored under new counter-terrorism powers being sought by the security services.

Records of journeys made by people using smart cards that allow 17 million Britons to travel by underground, bus and train with a single swipe at the ticket barrier are among a welter of private information held by the state to which MI5 and police counter-terrorism officers want access in order to help identify patterns of suspicious behaviour.

The request by the security services, described by shadow Home Secretary David Davis last night as ‘extraordinary’, forms part of a fierce Whitehall debate over how much access the state should have to people’s private lives in its efforts to combat terrorism.

It comes as the Cabinet Office finalises Gordon Brown’s new national security strategy, expected to identify a string of new threats to Britain - ranging from future ‘water wars’ between countries left drought-ridden by climate change to cyber-attacks using computer hacking technology to disrupt vital elements of national infrastructure.

The fear of cyber-warfare has climbed Whitehall’s agenda since last year’s attack on the Baltic nation of Estonia, in which Russian hackers swamped state servers with millions of electronic messages until they collapsed. The Estonian defence and foreign ministries and major banks were paralysed, while even its emergency services call system was temporarily knocked out: the attack was seen as a warning that battles once fought by invading armies or aerial bombardment could soon be replaced by virtual, but equally deadly, wars in cyberspace.

While such new threats may grab headlines, the critical question for the new security agenda is how far Britain is prepared to go in tackling them. What are the limits of what we want our security services to know? And could they do more to identify suspects before they strike?

One solution being debated in Whitehall is an unprecedented unlocking of data held by public bodies, such as the Oyster card records maintained by Transport for London and smart cards soon to be introduced in other cities in the UK, for use in the war against terror. The Office of the Information Commissioner, the watchdog governing data privacy, confirmed last night that it had discussed the issue with government but declined to give details, citing issues of national security.

Currently the security services can demand the Oyster records of specific individuals under investigation to establish where they have been, but cannot trawl the whole database. But supporters of calls for more sharing of data argue that apparently trivial snippets - like the journeys an individual makes around the capital - could become important pieces of the jigsaw when fitted into a pattern of other publicly held information on an individual’s movements, habits, education and other personal details. That could lead, they argue, to the unmasking of otherwise undetected suspects.

Individuals wrongly identified as suspicious might lose high-security jobs, or have their immigration status brought into doubt, he said. Ministers are also understood to share concerns over civil liberties, following public opposition to ID cards, and the debate is so sensitive that it may not even form part of Brown’s published strategy.

But if there is no consensus yet on the defence, there is an emerging agreement on the mode of attack. The security strategy will argue that in the coming decades Britain faces threats of a new and different order. And its critics argue the government is far from ready.

(Source)

What they need are some technologically intelligent people who can conceive of ways to protect their citizens without violating all their liberties.

Primary school children should be eligible for the DNA database if they exhibit behaviour indicating they may become criminals in later life, according to Britain’s most senior police forensics expert.Gary Pugh, director of forensic sciences at Scotland Yard and the new DNA spokesman for the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo), said a debate was needed on how far Britain should go in identifying potential offenders, given that some experts believe it is possible to identify future offending traits in children as young as five.’If we have a primary means of identifying people before they offend, then in the long-term the benefits of targeting younger people are extremely large,’ said Pugh. ‘You could argue the younger the better. Criminologists say some people will grow out of crime; others won’t. We have to find who are possibly going to be the biggest threat to society.’

Pugh admitted that the deeply controversial suggestion raised issues of parental consent, potential stigmatisation and the role of teachers in identifying future offenders, but said society needed an open, mature discussion on how best to tackle crime before it took place. There are currently 4.5 million genetic samples on the UK database - the largest in Europe - but police believe more are required to reduce crime further. ‘The number of unsolved crimes says we are not sampling enough of the right people,’ Pugh told The Observer. However, he said the notion of universal sampling - everyone being forced to give their genetic samples to the database - is currently prohibited by cost and logistics.

A recent report from the think-tank Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) called for children to be targeted between the ages of five and 12 with cognitive behavioural therapy, parenting programmes and intensive support. Prevention should start young, it said, because prolific offenders typically began offending between the ages of 10 and 13. Julia Margo, author of the report, entitled ‘Make me a Criminal’, said: ‘You can carry out a risk factor analysis where you look at the characteristics of an individual child aged five to seven and identify risk factors that make it more likely that they would become an offender.’ However, she said that placing young children on a database risked stigmatising them by identifying them in a ‘negative’ way.

Shami Chakrabarti, director of the civil rights group Liberty, denounced any plan to target youngsters. ‘Whichever bright spark at Acpo thought this one up should go back to the business of policing or the pastime of science fiction novels,’ she said. ‘The British public is highly respectful of the police and open even to eccentric debate, but playing politics with our innocent kids is a step too far.’

Last week it emerged that the number of 10 to 18-year-olds placed on the DNA database after being arrested will have reached around 1.5 million this time next year. Since 2004 police have had the power to take DNA samples from anyone over the age of 10 who is arrested, regardless of whether they are later charged, convicted, or found to be innocent. (Source)

One has to wonder if children who refuse to believe in gods or otherwise think for themselves will be suspect.

I suggest if anyone wants to disprove evolution they use as an example the members of Florida school boards.

 Board Opposes Evolution Being Taught As Fact

Four of five members of the School Board of Highlands County oppose the proposed change in the state’s science standards that would present evolution as fact to students.

Some school board members across the state have opposed the proposed revisions to the science curriculum that specifies that evolution be taught as “fact” as opposed to a “theory,” School Board Attorney John McClure said at a recent school board meeting. School Board Chairman J. Ned Hancock said Thursday he would support the resolution to encourage the state not to approve the science standard of evolution as fact.

School Board Vice Chairman Andy Tuck said Thursday, “as a person of faith, I strongly oppose any study of evolution as fact at all. I’m purely in favor of it staying a theory and only a theory. “I won’t support any evolution being taught as fact at all in any of our schools.”(Source)

North Florida weighing in against evolution

A growing number of North Florida superintendents and school boards are objecting to the state’s proposed new science standards, saying the standards give too much credence to evolution and leave no room for alternative theories.

Evolution is “going to be taught as fact, and everyone knows it’s not fact,” said Dennis Bennett, the superintendent in Dixie County, west of Gainesville. “There’s holes in it you can drive a truck through.”

At least seven of Florida’s 67 school boards - all north of Ocala - have passed opposition resolutions, according to the Florida Citizens for Science, a group that supports the standards and has been methodically searching board minutes.

That number could double by the time the state Board of Education votes on the standards Feb. 19, said Wayne Blanton, executive director of the Florida School Boards Association.

Dominated by Baptist churches and dotted with military bases, most of North Florida makes no bones about its political and cultural conservatism. Throw an election year into the mix, Blanton said, and it’s no surprise that school officials in places like Bonifay and Macclenny are “going to try to do some things their constituents want.”

“We just wanted to get it on the record that we’re a Judeo-Christian community, and we believe in academic freedom,” Bennett said.

“I’m a Christian. And I believe I was created by God, and that I didn’t come from an amoeba or a monkey,” said Ken Hall, a School Board member in Madison County, east of Tallahassee.

The St. John’s resolution says the standards should “allow for balanced, objective and intellectually open instruction” that doesn’t treat evolution as “dogmatic fact.”

“Anybody with half a brain can see that natural selection takes place,” said Beverly Slough, a St. John’s board member who is president-elect of the Florida School Boards Association. “But to make great leaps from a fish to a man … the fossil record doesn’t support all that.”(Source)

Half-a-brain indeed. That seems to be the only requirement to be a Florida Board of Education member.

A lonely voice of reason:

 Schools Should Teach Evolution

Florida children may soon be the laughingstock of the nation, especially if they have a public school education.

There’s a move afoot to include the Bible story of creation as part of our science classes — you know the one: God created the world in six days and rested on the seventh?

Instead, Florida children should be learning about evolution in science class. The theory of evolution is just that, a scientific theory, with facts and fossils and proven timelines and carbon dating.

I’m sorry. The Bible story, the fable of creationism, has no place in official science class. No place in public school altogether, unless you’re taking some sort of comparative religion class. What’s next? Jonah and the whale instead of marine biology?

Teaching fables as real science does our children a disservice when they get out in the real world. Save the religious stories for Sunday school and let our Florida science teachers use real science to educate our students. (Source)

The Raw Story reports; I just shake my head in profound bemusement,

The United States Constitution never uses the word “God” or makes mention of any religion, drawing its sole authority from “We the People.” However, Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee thinks it’s time to put an end to that.

“I have opponents in this race who do not want to change the Constitution,” Huckabee told a Michigan audience on Monday. “But I believe it’s a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the living god. And that’s what we need to do — to amend the Constitution so it’s in God’s standards rather than try to change God’s standards so it lines up with some contemporary view.”

Huckabee has every right to believe whatever he wants to believe, just like any citizen of the United States of America.  But that’s not enough, nor is it a satisfactory condition, for candidate Huckabee.  He envisions an America where everyone is forced by law and Constitutional amendment to believe as he believes.  Not just in an invisible super-being who lives in the clouds and demands praise and devotion from his subjects, but the Baptist interpretation of this god.

Could anything be less American, more unconstitutional, than an avowed theist openly advocating turning America into a theocracy?  Could there be any suggestion put forth by a presidential candidate that could do more to further discredit the U.S. in the eyes of other nations, alienate our allies, increase tensions throughout the world, turn every combat situation America engages in into a religious war, than to suggest we amend, no, corrupt the Constitution to create an American version of Iran or Saudi Arabia?  If a Muslim suggested we amend the Constitution to conform to Muslim teaching, he couldn’t get elected dog catcher in Los Angeles.

This ought to immediately disqualify Huckabee from any further consideration as a presidential candidate.

It’s taken far too long, but at least finally something might be done to correct the situation.

Worsening friction between Congress and the head of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission escalated on Tuesday into a formal investigation of agency rule-making procedures and management practices.

The U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee said it launched the probe to determine if the agency had been fair, open, efficient and transparent when crafting regulations.

The panel did not cite a specific case in a letter to FCC Chairman Kevin Martin (pdf) but the investigation comes just three weeks after Martin defied lawmakers by holding a vote to ease media ownership restrictions.

Committee Chairman John Dingell a Democrat of Michigan and the ranking Republican, Joe Barton of Texas, asked Martin to save all electronic records and personal e-mails related to FCC work. The investigation would also “address a growing number of allegations received by the committee” that relate to management practices, their letter said.

Last month, Dingell expressed concern that under Martin, the FCC did not give enough notice of proposed new FCC rules and that Martin was slow to give the other four commissioners details of draft agenda items.

An FCC spokesman declined to comment on the letter, but said Martin had previously responded to a December inquiry from Dingell that asked about agency procedures.

“Commission processes and decision-making time frames remain essentially the same as the general decision-making procedures established nearly 10 years ago under Chairman William Kennard,” Martin wrote to Dingell.

By Julie Vorman WASHINGTON (Reuters) Read the full article…

The rocketlike rise of a once-obscure former Arkansas governor and Southern Baptist minister to the front ranks of the Republican presidential campaign owes much to the likes of Don Swisher.Chatting between Sunday services about the campaign in the foyer of First Assembly of God Church, Swisher said he plans to vote for Huckabee Thursday night at the Iowa precinct caucuses, the first official nomination contest of the 2008 presidential campaign.

“I like Huckabee,” the semiretired West Des Moines resident said yesterday. “He’s pro-life, a Baptist minister, so he’s Bible-based.”

Evangelical Christians are a formidable force in the Iowa caucuses: They are believed to make up more than 40 percent of the Republican electorate.

Religious issues have dominated the campaign to an uncommon degree even in a state where televangelist Pat Robertson placed first in the GOP caucuses in 1988.

The debate hasn’t centered just on issues such as abortion and gay rights that are important to religious conservatives. Much of the discussion has involved the personal religious faiths of the two leading Republicans – Huckabee and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, a Mormon.

“I’m really surprised how much religion has been an issue in the campaign,” said Bruce Nesmith, a professor of political science at Coe College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, who studies religion in politics.

Throughout most of 2007, evangelicals were deeply split, with pockets of support for Romney, former Sen. Fred Thompson of Tennessee, Sen. John McCain of Arizona and even former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, despite his support for abortion rights and a turbulent personal life that includes three marriages.

But many evangelicals stayed on the sidelines in the hope that a candidate they found acceptable would emerge.

For many of them, that person – Huckabee – was there all along. It just took people a long time to notice.

“They were deeply split until about a month or so ago. There is no one particular candidate who seemed like the obvious candidate to them,” said Dennis Goldford, a political science professor at Drake University in Des Moines.

“They liked what Romney said about social issues but didn’t trust how sincere he was. They wanted to like Thompson, but Thompson entered with such a splat. What happened, of course, was Huckabee slowly but surely made an impact.”

Huckabee won supporters thanks to his amiable campaign style, a succession of well-received debate performances and unflinching views on abortion and gay rights – in contrast to other Republican contenders whose social-conservative credentials are suspect to evangelicals.

For Huckabee, being a former minister who often wears his religious values on his sleeve closes the sale with some evangelical voters.

“I’m a born-again Christian,” said Eleanor Bauer, a retired graphic artist in Ankeny, Iowa. “And if I see something in life that I have a question about, I ask God about it. I feel like we are being led by God.

“Where someone else tries to go by their own wisdom instead of God’s, we just get in trouble. Huckabee would turn to God.”

But others, such as retired pastor Phil Carroll, a McCain supporter, thinks that when it comes to religion, Huckabee lays it on too thick.

“He’s a good man, but pastors get called to the ministry by God,” Carroll said. “Did God call him to be president? I don’t think so.

“John McCain, being a Christian, does not play the God card. He thinks that’s unethical, and I agree with him.”

Huckabee, interviewed on NBC’s “Meet the Press” yesterday, said he had no religious tests as governor of Arkansas when it came to public policy issues and would not as president.

“I never proposed a bill to remove the Capitol dome and replace it with a steeple,” he said. “We didn’t do tent revivals on the grounds of the Capitol.”

But critics question whether religion influenced Huckabee as governor to push for the early parole of a convicted rapist who went on to rape and kill two other women. They suggest Huckabee was swayed by a friend who was also a pastor who befriended the prisoner, Wayne DuMond, along with the rapist’s contention that he had been “born again.” Huckabee says he did not pressure the parole board to act.  (Source)

Americans seem determined to blindly set course for a theocracy without the slightest qualm.  They don’t seem to consider the fact that should we become a “Christian nation”, all our future wars will be similar to those fought in the Middle ages.  Once again it will be god against the heathens.

They also don’t seem to realize that religion is not tolerant of dissent.  At some point our rights will be suppressed to the “glory of god”.  And which god is destined to become our national savior?  The Baptist concept of god, the Lutheran, The Catholic, the Mormon?  If they all worshiped the same god, there wouldn’t be so many denominations across the nation.  If you’re a theist but worship the wrong god (i.e. not the national god) you’ll be no better off than those who don’t believe at all.

I’d like to think that this religious sturm und drang  is simply the dying cry of an outdated philosophy, religion’s disparate, dying breath.  Those who support Huckabee or Romney out of sympathetic religious views had best consider what will become of the United States should religion become a primary criteria for the next president.