PHONOGRAPH

The state Assembly Thursday narrowly advanced a bill that would bar communities from enforcing local restaurant smoking bans, effectively repealing 21 municipal and county ordinances around the state.
Instead, all communities would have to adhere to new statewide standards that in some cases are softer than the local ordinances.

The bill bars smoking in restaurants that seat more than 50 people, but it would be allowed anywhere in restaurants smaller than that. The measure would also allow smoking in most restaurant bars and in separate rooms in restaurants, such as banquet halls, as long as those rooms have different ventilation systems.

The bill's author, Rep. Jeff Fitzgerald (R-Horicon), said the measure would eliminate the patchwork of local standards that has sprung up, creating a level playing field for businesses across the state.

"It's tough enough as a small business to make it," he said. "We don't need local government coming in with a new rule."

As I stated earlier, this reasoning is nothing short of dumb. If we don't want local governments making their own rules, why do we even have local governments?

Let us remember that there are multiple theories of Intelligent Design. I and many others around the world are of the strong belief that the universe was created by a Flying Spaghetti Monster. It was He who created all that we see and all that we feel. We feel strongly that the overwhelming scientific evidence pointing towards evolutionary processes is nothing but a coincidence, put in place by Him.

It is for this reason that I'm writing you today, to formally request that this alternative theory be taught in your schools, along with the other two theories. In fact, I will go so far as to say, if you do not agree to do this, we will be forced to proceed with legal action. I'm sure you see where we are coming from. If the Intelligent Design theory is not based on faith, but instead another scientific theory, as is claimed, then you must also allow our theory to be taught, as it is also based on science, not on faith.

Beside it being a colossal waste of time, I don't think the flag burning amendment is a good idea anyway. I have never burned a flag. Amendment or not, I doubt I ever would. But somebody will. And that somebody could go to jail for it.

Would that be the United States I know? I don't think so. That wouldn’t be my United States. In fact, that United States would make me so angry; I might just go out and burn one of its flags.

It would be a flag that I made myself, not a store-bought one. I would fear that one from a store would have some sort of microchip in it that would report to the authorities if it was being desecrated.

“Desecration alert! Desecration alert,” the flag would say in a computer voice. It might blink too.

When it came time to try to burn my little homemade flag, I would probably have to hide, because some guy who probably cheats on his taxes and definitely cheats on his wife would rat me out if I burned it in the front yard. He’d call the police, who would arrest me on charges of flag desecration.

I would argue that it wasn’t a real U.S. Flag. It didn’t have enough stars (because my hand got tired drawing them on the tag board flag.)

“It doesn’t matter,” they would say. “What matters is intent.”

“What do you mean intent?” I would respond. “Intent to display my feelings of hate toward America?”

The officers would just nod, and politely cover my head as I duck into the back seat of the cop car.

They would have a case against me. I intended to burn the flag. I intended to do it because I hated America.

Or, I hated what it had become. As I sat it in the cop car, on the way to jail, I would think “I used to love the United States. I used to love the First Amendment. But this isn’t the First Amendment I used to know. This isn't the United States I used to know.”

Anticipating a Supreme Court confirmation battle this summer, a conservative group was to begin airing television commercials Wednesday that feature two of the Republicans' most prominent critics and charge that Democrats "will attack anyone the president nominates" to a vacancy.

"A nominee deserves real consideration, instead of instant attacks," says the ad, which Progress for America has set to run on cable television nationally through July 1.

A top Justice Department official threatened to remove a government expert from its witness list if he did not water down his recommended penalties for the tobacco industry, the witness said in an interview yesterday.

Harvard University business professor Max H. Bazerman said a career trial lawyer told him senior Justice officials wanted him to change his recommendation that the court appoint a monitor to review whether it was appropriate to remove senior tobacco company management.

In her situation, it was uniformly fatal. Standard practice would be to make Jeanna comfortable until she died. [Doctor] Willoughby, father of two small children with a third on the way, knew it would be hard to leave the Gieses without hope. They would ask: Isn't there something more you can do?

There was. But the treatment couldn't even be called experimental. It was just a theory, perhaps no more than a prayer. And success could come at a terrible cost: Jeanna could survive severely brain damaged or paralyzed, her green eyes staring from a leaden body.

The whole article is fascinating and compelling stuff. I will post links the second and third parts when they become available.

Registration is required to read it, so use this e-mail address at BugMeNot to sign in.

UPDATE: Here is part two. It's really long, but all good.
UPDATE TWO: Part three.

The newly disclosed documents make clear that the decision was made after weeks of tumult in the department and accusations from lawyers on the tobacco team that Mr. McCallum and other political appointees had effectively undermined their case. Mr. McCallum, No. 3 at the department, is a close friend of President Bush from their days as Skull & Bones members at Yale, and he was also a partner at an Atlanta law firm, Alston & Bird, that has done legal work for R.J. Reynolds Tobacco, part of Reynolds American, a defendant in the case.

"Everyone is asking, 'Why now?' " said a Justice Department employee involved in the case who insisted on anonymity for fear of retaliation. "Why would you throw the case down the toilet at the very last hour, after five years?"

About 40 percent of Americans say they consider talk show host Bill O'Reilly a journalist - more than would define famed Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward the same way, according to a poll conducted this spring.

Only 30 percent said Woodward, who broke the Watergate story with Carl Bernstein, was a journalist. More than a quarter said talk show host Rush Limbaugh was one, while one in five said they considered newspaper columnist George Will to be a journalist.

A giant gap exists between journalists and the general public. From the same article:

Only 3 percent of journalists said Limbaugh was "somewhat close" to being a journalist and 11 percent said that about O'Reilly, while 93 percent said Woodward was "somewhat close or very close" to being a journalist.

I think this survey probably reflects the popularity of these individuals more than their journalistic merits. What shocks me is that seven percent of journalists don't think Bob Woodward is at least "somewhat close" to being a journalist. Who are these journalists, and do they still have their jobs?

"Biggio likes to get hit once in a while," said Sandy Alomar, the bench coach for the Mets. "He wears that guard protection. There are certain pitches where he'll throw his body at them. He wants to get on."

Although the city's broad smoking ban covering bars and restaurants begins next month, there still will be lots of places to take a drag while nursing a brew or to cap that salmon and Chardonnay dinner.

That's because the city's smoke-free workplace law doesn't apply to the city's 40 or so sidewalk cafes or the multitude of outdoor decks and patios at bars and restaurants.

You can still light up, for example, at the Great Dane brew pub's outdoor beer garden Downtown.

"The line is drawn at the building," said Tommye Schneider, director of environmental health for the Madison Health Department. "There are no restrictions outdoors."

[T]housands of American families might find it harder to qualify for financial aid this year and might be asked to contribute more money toward the cost of college because of changes to a complicated federal formula they barely know about, much less understand.

Taken together, these changes, some based on overly optimistic predictions of inflation, have required families to count a greater share of their incomes and assets toward college expenses before becoming eligible for financial aid. As a consequence, tens of thousands of low-income students will no longer be eligible for federal grants; middle-class families are digging deeper into their savings...

Embedded in the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2005 is the requirement approved by Congress that all educational institutions receiving federal monies teach about the U.S. Constitution on Sept. 17, which is the day the document was signed in 1787.

If Sept. 17 falls on a weekend, as it does this year, the instruction must be held the week before or after the date.

U.S. Sen. Robert Byrd, D-West Virginia, placed the mandate into federal law, saying he was concerned that many Americans were unfamiliar with the document that organized the country’s form of government and set out the rights of citizens.

All public schools and universities will have to comply. While teaching the constitution is obviously important, I have three problems with this law:

Ohio State and Wisconsin have reached an agreement for the schools' men's hockey teams to play an outdoor game in Green Bay's Lambeau Field on Feb. 11, 2006.

The game would be the second college hockey game to be played outdoors. On Oct. 6, 2001, Michigan and Michigan State played in front of 74,554 fans in MSU's Spartan Stadium.

"I would like to see us to return to a little more international coverage on the domestic feed and a little more environmental coverage, and, maybe, maybe a little less of the pervert of the day," he said in a speech to CNN employees outside the old Atlanta mansion where the network first aired.

"You know, we have a lot of perverts on today, and I know that, but is that really news? I mean, come on. I guess you've got to cover Michael Jackson, but not three stories about perversion that we do every day as well."

His remarks won applause and laughter from CNN employees, but the moderator for Turner's remarks, CNN correspondent Christiane Amanpour, said: "But everyone else is doing that. Why do you think it's important not to?"

Turner replied: "Somebody's got to be a serious news person. Somebody's got to be the most respected name in television news, and I wanted that position for CNN.

"I wanted to be The New York Times of the airwaves. Not the New York Post, but The New York Times. And that's what we set out to do, and we did it."

Turner said some pretty smart things. The comment about the Times is interesting to me. The New York Times has established itself as paper of record, a keeper of the history of the nation for future generations to read and understand. They became a paper of record by keeping things in perspective and not delving into the trivial.

Does anyone today consider any cable news network to be a network of record? Gosh, I hope not. How would we explain to future generations the importance of all those car chases, celebrity trials, and water skiing squirrels?

Simply trimming benefits for the wealthy does little to help Social Security. The rich are too few in number and get limited benefits already.

Small increases in the amount of income subject to the Social Security tax - such as lifting the cap from the current $90,000 to $140,000 - don't help much either. For the soak-the-rich strategy to work, higher taxes must be aimed at the super-rich.