I've already said here that my brother in law is a physician. He has all kinds of outrageous beliefs that I have very little problem shooting down when we end up in debate..

As someone who is an oenophile, he has very little room to talk about drug use and yet he constantly tells me how evil drugs are and how marijuana makes one lazy and stupid.

My point being that an individual's status as an MD does not preclude them having some very whacky and hypocritical ideas.

The Hindustan Times is reporting that the Pakistan government is backing away completely from its claim that Bemazir Bhutto died from a head wound on Dec. 27.

The paper says the government wants to "apologize" for asserting that Bhutto died from a widely reported knock on the head while riding in a bullet-proof vehicle during a rally in support of her candidacy for leadership of country.

The Pak paper says the government wants people to "forgive and forget" its claims about a fatal "skull fracture."

To reinforce the government's new "never mind" stance on the theory of the head wound to Bhutto, the Punjab Home Ministry has run a full, front-page ad offering a reward for information "about a gunman" seen in photos and videos of Bhutto's motorcade, taken before and during the attack.

Sorry.... I stand corrected.

I still get frustrated when people who can and should know better nevertheless say things theyu don't believe because they think it will "play in Peoria"

Its not the first time I've seen ignorance being held up as a virtue.

This too, is clearly dishonest.

-- Paul Dirks

This is intellectual dishonesty. Aych is engaging in a form of intellectual dishonesty by trying to conflate the crime of graft and corruption with intellectual dishonesty. Perhaps he would like to employ the criminal sanction here wrt to intellectual dishonesty. Hello, Thought Police!

Let's all just learn to think and we can avoid all that by not electing the truly intellectually dishonest.

Ron Paul ( a physician and hence someone who knows better) says he doubts evolution. He's doing so because a significant portion of his base object to science on religious grounds and he doesn't want to alienate them.

I'm not convinced that Paul wasn't being dishonest (lying) and pandering to us when he didn't raise his hand at the debate to deny a "belief" in evolution. People with Ph.D.s deny it all the time. Not that it really matters.

I still get frustrated when people who can and should know better nevertheless say things theyu don't believe because they think it will "play in Peoria"

Which was my point about the Democratic candidates possibly waffling on evolution.

I think the Sage of Baltimore had something to say about that.

think the best thing Mush can do do now is allow an independent autopsy-whomever Bhuttos family wants and not let the results get compromised.

I think there is ISI complicity-but I'm not so sure it was a top-down order from Mush. I think the ISI has lots to hide-some rather unsavory connections to CIA who created the Frankenstein.

I read also about a US drone that had made an attack on one of the leaders of an extremist faction the very next day. The guy had just suffered a stroke or some other injury and was recovering when hit again by US. I don't think the US should be engaging in such tactics when it's very easy for the ISI to simply "make up" enemies and should not be trusted as reliable. They have their own game to play-and I think the drug trade in Afghanistan and Pakistan are the reason why-which could lead to CIA/Bush family involvement? Ummm remember Latin America anyone? anyone?.....(btw rendition flight crashing in South America last month with 4 tons of cocaine on board)---

I also think this is why the WH wants to keep US troops out of Pakistan looking for OBL--that and a deal with the Bin Laden fam they probably made to tip off ahead of time---just like Tora Bora.

This mess that is Pakistan now is a direct result of the CIAs meddling in other countries' affairs -in a proxy war with Russia during the Afghanistan invasion.

What a """effing mess they've made of it all.

btw-....Kissinger, GHB both in CIA then.

Aych is engaging in a form of intellectual dishonesty by trying to conflate the crime of graft and corruption with intellectual dishonesty.

Where did I mention graft and corruption?

Quotes please.

Politicians say things they do not believe as reflexively as their cardiac rhythm. That Paul does so does not make him unique, indeed if he were not to, that would be unique.

Mmm.... If that were to happen, L.W.M., I suspect that we'd eventually evolve to be all teeth, so's not to wind up as someone else's endosymbiont (I prefer to drive rather than ride pillion -- Acharaych the motorcyclist would understand, I think) and to synthesize our own Pepto-Bismol, just in case we inadvertently ingested a bucky or two along the way.

Damn. Why does a conversation with you always seem to want to fly off in all directions? I mean, honestly, even a polymath has to light somewhere sometime.

Presumptuous Insect, I worked at a university for over thirty years. The humiliations and the uncertainty inflicted on the graduate students, not to mention the poverty, always made me deeply angry. Their eventual creation of an effective union on my campus was a marvel to behold. Of course the fact that this was in California, not Texas or Alabama, may have had something to do with their success.

Of course, the Pakistani government doesn't have more capable, as Glenn would say, Serious spokespeople like, say Time magazine. The proper way to report that story would have been

While Brigadier Cheema has said Ms. Bhutto died from hitting her head on a lever, bloggers and others put up photographs of the assassination on the Internet. The photographs say she was killed by a bullet. Republicans disagree.

A huge round of applause for Teeth Maestro et al. in the Pakistani blogosphere!