Ask an (Illegal) Immigrant Day

America’s new immigration policy should be based on the opinions, wants and needs of actual illegal immigrants. /sarcasm.

Some Harmony Docs

Read in Arabic first, then the English translation to make sure it was all translated correctly.

Franken and Coulter on the lectern at the same time?

Will there be a debate?
The most inflammatory figures of the Left and Right meet onstage Monday, March 27 in Los Angeles.

Hopefully there will be some good repartee–check the website for audio stream info.

Teacher had sex with four of her students

Teacher Sentenced

Can you see why this female teacher/male student story didn’t make the front page?

Media in Unison

What’s your favorite recent media tagline coordination? Is it the term (all regarding Bush) “towel snapping”? “Culture of corruption?” Or “Blame the media”?

A (good) shouting-down on Al Jazeera

Dr. Wafa Sultan, a middle-aged, Syrian-American psychiatrist taking on an imam on the Arab Channel.

French Employment Contract

A view into the employment morass (malaise?) the French continually find themselves in:

Villepin says his First Job Contract will help young people find jobs, crucial because youth unemployment is more than double the national average and rises to 50 percent in some poor suburbs where it was a factor behind riots in November.

But the law allows employers to dismiss people under 26 at any time during a 2-year trial period and that would destroy job security, critics say.

“I would say ‘no’ (to a job offered under the law) because I would have no security for two years,” Jerome Desprol, 24, told Reuters.

So let’s have a massive march to protest!

Welcome

This is an editable region where you can post any kind of message or news item you’d like. We can put text or images here.

Feingold (Democrat) proposes Bush censure

Nothing like sending the right message to our enemies:

Senator proposes Bush censure - Politics - MSNBC.com
The resolution says the president “repeatedly misled the public” before the disclosure of the NSA program last December when he indicated the administration was relying on court orders to wiretap terror suspects inside the U.S.

Perhaps Russ should stick to restricting other, less important rights.

After Gay Marriage, Polygamy Activism Rises

Polygamists, unite!

From Newsweak:

“Polygamy rights is the next civil-rights battle,” says Mark Henkel, who, as founder of the Christian evangelical polygamy organization TruthBearer.org, is at the forefront of the movement. His argument: if Heather can have two mommies, she should also be able to have two mommies and a daddy.

Who’s to argue with that kind of logic?

Here we go again . .

A new front opened on the War on Wal-Mart:

A group of lawmakers on Friday said an industrial bank owned by Wal-Mart , the world’s largest retailer, could threaten the stability of the U.S. financial system and drive community banks out of business.

Death of a monster

My Way News
Slobodan Milosevic, the former Yugoslav leader, who was branded “the butcher of the Balkans” and was on trial for war crimes after orchestrating a decade of bloodshed during the breakup of his country, was found dead Saturday in his prison cell. He was 64.

Apparently tens of thousands of people will not get their due justice.

George Clooney’s media filter is set to ’smarm’

Peggy Noonan absolutely hits one out of the park with this take on what makes Gorgeous George tick:

Orson Welles was an artist. George Clooney is a fellow who read an article and now wants to tell us the truth, if we can handle it.

More important, Orson Welles had a canny respect for the audience while maintaining a difficult relationship with studio executives, whom he approached as if they were his intellectual and artistic inferiors. George Clooney has a canny respect for the Hollywood establishment, for its executives and agents, and treats his audience as if it were composed of his intellectual and artistic inferiors. . . .

And because they are his inferiors, he must teach them. He must teach them about racial tolerance and speaking truth to power, etc. He must teach them to be brave. . .

But Mr. Clooney’s remarks were also part of the tinniness of the age, and of modern Hollywood. I don’t think he was being disingenuous in suggesting he was himself somewhat heroic. He doesn’t even know he’s not heroic. He thinks making a movie in 2005 that said McCarthyism was bad is heroic.

How could he think this? Maybe part of the answer is in this: The Clooney generation in Hollywood is not writing and directing movies about life as if they’ve experienced it, with all its mysteries and complexity and variety. In an odd way they haven’t experienced life; they’ve experienced media. Their films seem more an elaboration and meditation on media than an elaboration and meditation on life. This is how he could take such an unnuanced, unsophisticated, unknowing gloss on the 1950s and the McCarthy era. He just absorbed media about it. And that media itself came from certain assumptions and understandings, and myths.

Most of us take don’t take Clooney’s guff with any sort of seriousness. As nobody expects the film industry to provide counterpoint films or at least a platform to discuss controversial themes, popular films like Clooney’s latest three — and like Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 911–absorb into the collective consciousness of a majority incapable of cynicism.

Today’s Brown Shirts drive SUVs

CNN.com - Accused: Campus crash was ‘to spread will of Allah’ - Mar 6, 2006.

Spreading the will of Allah on the street, one body at a time.

Oscar update

Why watch the Academy Awards when you can watch “Joe Dirt” on Comedy Central. This one never gets old.

Ferrari Case Takes New Twist With Possible Tie to Bus Agency

Update on the ‘missing’ Diettrich.

Gun magazine found near Gizmondo exec’s crashed Ferrari

Update on the missing Diettrich:

A week after former Gizmondo executive Stefan Eriksson’s Enzo Ferrari was destroyed on a Californian highway, police have announced that a gun magazine found nearby may be connected to the crash.

According to the LA Times, detectives are attempting to determine whether the magazine is linked to the incident. They are looking to interview a person who they think was in the car with Eriksson - presumably the mysterious ‘Dietrich’, who Eriksson has previously claimed was driving at the time of the crash.

Sergeant Phil Brooks also told the LA Times that the vehicle was one of two Enzos imported into the US by Eriksson, along with a Mercedes SLR. Brooks said that police have not been able to find the correct papers for the car, meaning it was not “street legal” for driving on Californian roads.

Brooks added that police now believe the car was travelling at 162 miles per hour when it crashed, and not 120 mph as previously reported. The crash occurred when the Ferrari hit a bump in the road, causing it to fly through the air and smash into a power pole.

Juicy!

Report Documents 18 Years of ‘Dirty War’ in Mexico

More light on a sad period in Mexican history.