• Childfreedom

    Somali Woman “As Good As Dead”

    But the woman’s family are insisting that the militiamen will continue to occupy the hospital until they are compensated for the removal of her womb. The family is demanding 50 camels, which is the traditional Somali compensation offered for the death of a woman. The woman’s family say she is as good as dead because she can no longer bear children. This has been bothering me all day. I realize that this woman comes from a traditional culture, in a place where survival is everything. She would have died had a doctor at a free clinic in Mogadishu not removed…

  • Hot Off The Presses

    Seymour Hersh

    Joi Itoquotes Lauren Weinstein: Greetings. Seymour Hersh of The New Yorker, who exposed so many aspects of the Iraqi prisoner abuse story, now reports that U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and national security advisor Condoleezza Rice secretly approved the expansion of a clandestine program that encouraged physical coercion, sexual humiliation, and blackmail of Iraqi prisoners, setting the stage for the abuses that these same officials have recently been condemning so publicly. According to the report, President Bush was kept informed regarding this program. The Department of Defense called the accusations in the story “outlandish, conspiratorial, and filled with error and…

  • Traveling Along, We're Adventurers

    Jiggity Jog and so forth

    As you’ve probably guessed, dear robots and spiders and lurkers (oh my)… we’re home. We pulled into the driveway at about 430pm today, after putting a little over 3800 miles on the nice Silver Beast we rented. David did all the driving and deserves about a month of back rubs. And more. Our last wild-ass guess on pictures uploaded: approximately 1.3 GIG of images. I’ll be doing a lot of re-sizing of the ones I already used in posts – I didn’t have a lot of time to fool with them, but they will be a more manageable size soon.…

  • Radio

    White Knight and His Lady?

    The Highland Park couple that founded the precursor to Air America Radio before selling most of it to a group of investors are in negotiations to gain control of the troubled liberal talk network, sources said Thursday. Sources familiar with the negotiations said Sheldon and Anita Drobny want to buy–with the aid of at least one major new investor–a majority stake in the company. I wasn’t able to listen to AAR much on the trip, and now it’s the weekend so I have to wait until Monday to hear “Majority Report.”

  • The Never-Ending Bloga

    Can You Hear Me NOW???

    FARGO, N.D. – A man who said he was fed up with his cellular phone service went to a Fargo mall and started hurling phones across a store, striking an employee and causing more than $2,000 in damage, authorities said. Guess he was really fed up with the annoying banner ads. I know I am, because it bugs the hell out of me when I get Mfop2to work but Verizon adds an annoying 2 line ad with extra spaces that reads: This message was sent using Picture Messaging from Verizon Wireless! To learn how you can snap and send pictures…

  • Good and Joyful Things

    Preaching to the Choir, which is Not Listening

    Just four months after an alliance of conservative Christians was threatening a churchgoer revolt unless President Bush championed an amendment banning same-sex marriage, members say they have been surprised and disappointed by what they call a tepid response from the pews. Most of the groups supporting the proposed federal constitutional amendment concede that it appears all but dead in Congress for this election year. As Massachusetts prepares to become the first state in the nation to allow same-sex marriage on Monday, several high-profile conservatives say they are now pinning their hopes mainly on reaction to events there, betting that scenes…

  • Moblog

    Saftey First, hyuk!

    Crash Test Goofy approves of car safety: Federal regulators proposed today an overhaul of the side-impact crash tests performed on cars and trucks. The new test procedures will reinforce the industry’s voluntary commitment to equip almost all new vehicles with inflatable curtains and other side airbags that protect people’s heads by the end of the decade.