...terrorism, terrorism, terrorism! How about we drop the terrorism terminology and stick with labels like "murder" and "heinous crime" instead? Invoking "terrorism" for crime only invites additional extremism from people on both sides as well as from our own government because the word "terrorism" apparently turns off many people's ability to think rationally.

We do need to act to protect doctors and clinic workers at the relatively few clinics that are left. And we need to get accurate information about what these procedures were/are out there to the masses so that nutcases and zealots (such as a few of the letter writers here) can't get away with spouting their ignorance and potentially having it believed. A good place to start might be with comments/letters like the one here (http://www.balloon-juice.com/?p=22002, or click my sig) where the sort of pain that people facing the difficult choice of late term abortion comes through loud and clear.

I mourn the doctor who was murdered. This was a heinous crime, killing a doctor going into his church, and it should be prosecuted to the fullest extent. But drop the terrorism label, please. I've heard enough about terrorism and terrorists for the last eight years to last a lifetime.

The guy who murdered this doctor is scum. Yes, it was terrifying. But it was the single act of a misguided zealot, not terrorism.

There are only so many tankers around that can be used for storage, and it costs a pretty penny to lease them. Sooner or later, they will have to unload, flooding markets where there just isn't that much demand.

Exactly right. When the oil in those futures contracts arrives, the holders of those contracts either have to sell the contracts (and the oil that goes with them) or take delivery. The only way that speculation can drive price over the long run is through hoarding, and when we're talking about a commodity like oil where the US alone on average imports 10,000,000 barrels of the stuff a day, that's a lot to hoard.

The fundamentals, at this moment, don't seem to support a robust market.

Market fundamentals are turning into a running joke. Checked the stock ticker lately? Floyd Norris had an entry on his NY Times blog yesterday wondering why a bankrupt company's shares were trading for up to a buck and closed the day with a market cap of close to half a billion dollars for something that is worthless. (Post linked in sig.)

Before the demand destruction brought on by the world recession, oil production was barely running ahead of consumption and any little potential disruption in the supply was causing huge price swings. The fact is that the production of oil seems to be either very close to or at peak, and demand for oil (in a growing world economy at least) is very close to what we are physically able to extract. Once we permanently reach the point where supply is no longer able to exceed demand, the price of oil will rise and never look back.

I recommend people take 17 minutes or so needed to get through this segment on peak oil: http://www.chrismartenson.com/crashcourse/chapter-17a-peak-oil (or click my sig.)

Was Drake drunk when he said that, or was he simply suffering from oxygen deprivation due to having his head up his ass?

Now I am sad that he went to hell...

I wonder if Drake is familiar with "Judge not lest ye be judged"? I'm no longer religious, but I recall that deciding who is or isn't going to hell isn't up to us mere mortals.

He could have chosen Jesus Christ and when he died went to heaven.

Dr. Tiller was on his way into church when he was murdered. Of course it was a Lutheran church, not Southern Baptist, so in Drake's mind, perhaps being a Lutheran doesn't count as being a Christian.

I have a strange hunch and a strange feeling that there is a special, superheated, super-hot place in hell for people like George Tiller.

I don't believe in hell, but if I did, I'd wager that people like Wiley Drake and Scott Roeder are far more likely to have rooms reserved in that place than would Dr. George Tiller.

That's the difference between 6,750,000 and 6,735,000. Seems not too far removed from statistical noise. I mean, if you were standing in the middle of a sea of six and three quarter million people and fifteen thousand of them vanished, unless one of the vanished was standing next to you, would you even notice?

I'll raise the same question that others have raised: How much of the decrease in continuing claims for benefits (which is where this "good" number comes from) are due to people who have exhausted their benefits? Jobs are still being lost at a pretty astounding clip and unemployment is still rising.

Finally, why would the layoff of more than 620,000 be reason to think that the worst is over? That number may be down from the truly horrendous peak, but it's still way, way high. In fact, it wasn't until the end of January of this year that initial claims for UI exceeded 600k in this downturn, and whatever "good" news we are supposed to get from 620k sort of gets blunted by the fact that initial claims were 605k in back on May 2. So we're higher than that now.

The bottom line here is that you can't micro-parse the data. Week to week results don't mean much. It's the bigger picture you need to look at, and in that regard, the moving average actually went up by 4k. Go figure.

(You can run the numbers on claims here: http://www.ows.doleta.gov/unemploy/claims.asp , or click my sig.)