The Eagle wrote "As all scientists know, we need to be able to repeat our measurements and results. In order to prove man evolved from an ape, we need repeatable data. Otherwise it's just a hypothesis, yet to be validated."

Well, no, not exactly. There is something between a hypothesis and a fact. It's called a theory. When, over time, ALL of the available evidence tends to support the hypothesis and there is no countervailing evidence, then the hypothesis becomes a theory, something that cannot yet be demonstrated empirically but which is assumed to be true because ALL of the available evidence supports it.

Examples of hypotheses would be the many flavors of creationism and intelligent design. Someone has posited an idea, but there is no supporting evidence of any kind, so these ideas have not advanced to the level of theory. And, BTW, gaps in evolutionary theory are not ipso facto evidence of something else.

I use my laptop to read newspapers. I can't get all of the ones I want to look at locally. I read the New York Times, Washington Post, Daily Ha'aretz, LA Times and others every day. Couldn't do that nearly as well with physical newspapers. Since I never go to chains like Starbucks, that part is just not relevant.

No, Babel is not better than we were told - Babel sucks. Also, Matt Damon was not the best thing in The Departed - Mark Wahlberg was the real performance there.

IMHO, the best acting performances of the year are Helen Mirrewn in The Queen and Forrest Whitaker in The Last King of Scotland.

Make that Helen Mirren

I rarely agree with you on anything, but you are correct that the Nazi tag is overused and mostly inaccurately used. Bush and his neo-con scumbag supporters are not, by any reasonable standards. Mussolini was not a Nazi either. That said, they are fascist. Belief in very authoritarian government combined with a close alliance with a completely amoral corpotocracy is the definition of fascism.

Vietnam was a completely unprovoked war. We betrayed Ho Chi Minh in 1945 and sent the colonial filth back in. We sabotaged the elections set for 1956 because Ho Chi Minh would have won in a landslide. We then set up our own puppet government in the South and began a new war against the local population on behalf of the landowners and Roman Catholic church.

SJ:

Please don't even begin with the canard that Nazism was a secular ideology. Thta is just obscene Christian revisionism to avoid accountability for the Holocaust. The Nazis were Christians - all of them. Every Jew murdered by the Nazis was murdered by a Christian. 11 million in all murdered in the camps including 6 million Jews.

Then, of course, there was the 'really' big Holocaust. American genocide against Native Americans - 15 million slaughtered in the 19th century in the U.S. alone. Who perpetrated that? Christians. There are another 50 million murdered by all European invaders from 1492 to the present.

Yes, there is Stalin, Pol Pot et al. Secular in the religious sense, yes, but still true believers in Leninist-Marxist drivel. I certainly agree that this group of filth murdered something like 90 million people in 72 years - just about the same as religious whack jobs.

The problem is true believers of any stripe.

Futhark-

Have you lost your mind? Ron Paul is a Libertarian whack job who wants to eliminate Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the minimum wage, unemployment insurance and every piece of environmental protection. He is a social Darwinist nightmare. There may be some common ground with Libertarians, but the downside of these bozos far exceeds any potential upside.

Ktwdawg-

What are you thinking? Wesley Clark? He supports the war in Iraq, he opposes national health insurance, he is quite anti-environment, etc. He's a DINO to the core. His presence on any ticket would make me stay home

Ktwdawg-

I've read Obama's book. He's very wishy washy on separation of church and state. He claims to be for it, but he has on several occasions said that he supports limited prayer in public schools. He has also talked about teaching Intelligent Design as a competing theory to evolution. There can be no wiggle room here. Either you actually support real religious freedom or you don't.

Then, there is his association with and catering to some of the most virulent anti-homosexual bigots in the Black community. I will confess to being one of those rich, white, straight men who control everything, but I will vote for no one who does not believe in equal rights for ALL Americans regardless of status - and, yes, that does include gay marriage.

Students or student groups have the right to pray in schools today. Tht is not a problem. BUT, if that prayer is in a classroom or over the PA system, then we have imposed religion. Obama said he would allow some prayer in classrooms and by public address. That is flat out unacceptable. You pray at my child, I punch your lights out, period.

With regard to gay marriage, yes, the words are precisely what's important. Equal means equal - it doesn't mean sort of equal or quasi equal - it means equal. Equal means there are no semantic distinctions between or among classes of people. This semantic approach reminds me of the apartheid practice of making distinction between 'blacks' and 'coloreds'. Those distinctions are the essence of bigotry regardless of the class of people that we're discussing.